If you're like me, you've been focusing lot of your attention recently on Washington, DC as Congress has been debating the new economic stimulus package. The crisis we as a country find ourselves in appears to be so critical that inaction is not really an option. A majority of Representatives and Senators and the vast majority of Americans are stating very strongly that we cannot afford for any of us to be standing on the sidelines afraid to act. Most of our leaders are at least speaking out with regard to the direction they think we should go.

Author Thomas Friedman, in his newest book Hot, Flat, and Crowded, challenges Americans with another crisis: the global climate crisis. Here, too, avoidance is not an option. He writes:

If our parents were the Great Generation, we need to be the Regeneration. ...Yet we should not fool ourselves. The green revolution is not where it needs to be. No single national politician has run on the position that we need to make green disappear by embodying it in every aspect of American life. Right now green is just a box politicians have to check, not a governing philosophy.

Green is also not a life philosophy yet for most of us. But it will have to become that if we, as a society and as humanity, are to meet this challenge.

Sometimes, the scope of a crisis makes inaction just not an option. Our lives are at stake and most of us will act. In my experience, however, in the face of lesser crises or even just everyday choices and decision, many us fail to act. We don't take a stand for what we believe is really important because we are afraid. We don't make choices to grow and challenge ourselves. We choose instead a passive response with the silent hope that maybe I won't really have to step out this time. We echo in our lives the words of the contemplative Thomas Merton:

Perhaps I am stronger than I think. Perhaps I am even afraid of my strength and turn it against myself, thus making myself weak - making myself secure - making myself guilty. Perhaps I am most afraid of the strength of God in me. Perhaps I would rather be guilty and weak in myself, than strong in [God] whom I cannot understand. (Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, Sheldon Press)

For us to survive, and possible even flourish, in the current national and global crises, everyone has to be in. The stakes are too high for any of us to stand on the sidelines out of fear. All our leaders have to find ways to work together to develop and implement policies that will work. All our citizens have to work together to participate and also to support and help each other.

The same spirit of participation is also essential for life even when we are not responding to major crises. Many of us spend significant parts of our lives trying to fly under the radar and avoid tough choices. Many of our churches do the same. I suspect we are hoping we won’t really have to make basic changes in how we relate to others and view life.

I confess that I have had this attitude for much of my life. Yes, it would be nice to think of myself as strong, proud, and accomplished. Sometimes a life crisis challenges me and I do step up. And when I do, I find that I am changed. I become more the self that I want to be. Far too often, however, in the face of hard choices as well as in the daily challenge of more mundane choices, I have tended to shrink back and follow paths of least resistance. I have played it safe. Maybe you have too?

Jesus taught and exemplified the importance of being all you can be. The new birth he offered is the image of trusting in the partnership each of us has with the source of all life – with God. The potential for life to be transformed lies in that partnership. God, in whatever way you envision God, seems to have chosen to trust in human beings to do a lot of the work of redemption and transformation. It is as we step up to that work, that we find the power, life, and love of the Spirit working through us and in us. Such power rarely comes before we make the commitment of ourselves, but it always follows that commitment. So, are you in?

Thanks for continuing to bless me as we journey together.

--Jack Price

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