'Come on, Jake!' we cheer quietly, for that is how such things must be. You see we're in the wake of a Martyr and a Martyr has to be made by someone else's grander hands.
But we cheer, to ourselves.
The young man approaches the threshold of the life he'd prefer to have, maybe the second step back from the landing, and he asks a distracting but related question to his friends, which we rightly cant hear. He sits down. His friends encourage him, his friends jeer him and then his friends do that impossible thing that our young man, Jake, just cant do. They leap from the rock edge and plunge down into the brisk waters below.
He tries a lower ledge, 'His mother told him to be careful.' quips one of us, which he gets down on and furthers his exploits as a spectacle. But again the call backward, the call of safety, the shrill cry of someone who made before they gave, the proper precursor to bravery, lifts him up and off the daring platform.
Jake, we know, is in a spot of bother. Everything important, everything of worth, is on the other side of that leap. That girl he likes. Those friends he admires. Allowing his mother to let go and trust him. Allowing his Father to take him by the heart instead of the scruff of the neck. That job he isn't qualified for but knows he can make a difference in. That too expensive project, whether pennies or time, visiting him in his dreams. It was all on the other side of that leap.
I know how important it is. I was Jake. I would come back when no one was watching, putting myself at huge risk, and then jump. I would be the last person to try the dirt ramp of volcanic red earth, kids on my road riding their bikes and tackling dirt jumps and trying aerial tricks, several times over. I'd try it, eventually, stack and cry, then run home. Eventually though, like Jake, I just stopped taking those immediate, bond expanding risks. I know how important it is.
I see him hugging the outer edge of the danger zone, I see him skulking off, I see him covering his body, and I see me. Precious, serious and sensitive, I see myself skulking off, I see myself covering up, I see myself not leaping.
I don't know whether I had anyone come explain and in a way that landed, just what is on the line in any one moment. I don't know if anyone tried to instill the sense of urgency with its wise gait of grace, and if they did, I don't know if I listened in the moment and turned it around. I could have been that for Jake, I wanted to be that.
As we leave, climbing the boulders away from the splash pool of a waterfall, known as Paradise Pools, I pass Jake. I want to say something but I cling to the outer edge of the danger zone and offer a glance I convince myself is as good as gold, next to speaking. Two frenchmen climb ahead of us and give him a broken english version of, 'You can do it! Don't be afraid!'. Jake gives a polite smile, the same smile we will give someone who commits one of ten thousand minor insults, the same smile that says, 'If I could hear you, I wouldn't need to hear it.'
He's smart, Jake. He has to be. He defends himself from his own inner critic, which sounds a lot like his bitter parents, or all of the pre-person certified adults who have no grief to suffer nor praise to bless with, he defends himself with his intellect. "Don't project!", you might say. I'm just animating the ghost of this person I don't know but whose actions haunt me, doc.
I don't know if we can heal from those failures to leap. I've been trying to do that since I failed to leap into my own Paradise Pools, the Paradise Pools of my youth. It is a kind of grief with an ever increasing body count to grieve. Drinking and smoking and otherwise undercutting my future, during my twenties did nothing to alleviate the hesitation.
More recently I was found by the annointed one, his Lord come flesh, whose spirit is everywhere, and I know I can lean on Him. I don't. But I could. I still get lost in the head down tangle of hair and weeds that is fear and I miss the shining support of the cross around my neck.
Perhaps Jake has that same provider, that same wily, risk taking and still kind example of a Human being to call upon. But he forgets how to call out, he forgets how to pray in someone else's name calling for courage in exchange for praise.
'He played it safe.' a coddling mother will say, nodding in approval at the risk not taken. He did, and I have, and safety is a shell game. A defensive intellect, calcifying around the fleshy slug of our desire to say yes to life, if only we weren't so afraid of being taken up by the birds.
Ryan Dickinson