How to Ride a Roller Coaster

​I'll get to the roller coaster in a second. But first, please take a moment to think about yourself and your personal experience. When do you feel the worst inside? Okay, let your answer sink in. Now, when do you feel the best?

I feel the worst went I feel hopeless and afraid.

I feel the best when love is moving through me, no matter what else is going on. The absolute best is if someone is creatively loving me at the same time, but a key ingredient to those greatest moments is that love is moving through me toward them, or simply moving through me in general, like a well-spring from within. 

Anxiety is running high in our society. It’s been harder to maintain the course of a loving river in me over the last few months. It’s like we went through some earthquakes that are still having some aftershocks, and many people are getting exhausted. I get that. There’s lots of fear, blame and shame – all of which are destructive. It’s like there was a choice to change the roller coaster tracks we were on as a society. A choice was made to go down an older, rougher track because it was decided that the more recent track wasn’t good enough. Okay, here we are.

First, it’s really important to accept the reality of where we are. It's complex but in many ways, our government and society are running on an older track now. It’s design is more primal, which brings both benefits and pitfalls. We are remembering what we like and what we don’t like about it. It’s more direct. It’s less careful. It doesn’t respect bodies like the more recent track did. This track tends to beat people up. It can be refreshing and exciting in being more straightforward, without the long, slow, sometimes laborious twists and turns of the more recent track. But this old track has some dangerous, unpredictable dips – dips that led to some derailments in the past. (That’s why the more recent track was built).

So the question is, what is the best way to ride now? The answer is, the same as always on a roller coaster. While on it, you have to trust your choice to ride at all. Trust the Creator of the park and the opportunity for the experience. Come to rest in your seat. Make sure that your bar is down and your seat belt is on. Settle in. Center yourself. Be present. Feel fear when it comes but don't follow it to any sense of despair. Face it creatively. Be you and actively live life with an adventurous, creative attitude from where you are. If you experience or see a bad dip, make a call on your cell phone to the current roller coaster workers. Be constructive in the ways you can while also seeing that panicking will not be constructive. Reassure the person next to you if they’re hyperventilating. Help them get their seatbelt and bar secure. Look for opportunities to love yourself, others and life itself. Seek to enjoy the ride by doing so. Enjoy the adventurous love welling up from within you as you do the things that open your heart completely to Life, like centering prayer and the practices of the rest that works.

When we move in the moment with love, we don’t suffer in the same ways as when we don’t. We go through sometimes great challenges, but as we nurture an adventurous, creative spirit in our hearts, we rise to the moment with love. God's Creative Love raises us. That is the great secret of the rest that works.

Thanks for journeying together. More power to you in your adventure.

Blessings,
Scott

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