on the razor's edge

I wrote yesterday: "I cut my toes walking the razor's edge between faith and wisdom." That thought has come back to me over and over in the past twenty-four hours, and I think maybe it's because that's what really defines my faith journey: a walk along the razor's edge.

Or maybe it's a walk along the river's edge.

In trying to make tangible this idea, a lyric from one of Dan Fogelberg's lesser-known songs keeps playing in my mind: "Lo que es de Dios? Lo que es de mio? Lo que es del rio?", which translates as, "What is God's? What is mine? What is the river's?"

When we are faced with walking into the Jordan, it's an all-or-nothing proposition. Either we stand there on the bank and watch our dreams and callings eddying and swirling and finally dissipating away, or we jump feet-first into the current, never looking back or considering all the shades of what-if that might have been suspended there in the air, displaced forever by the motion of our jumping.

But that finite moment, hanging in mid-air, is where I seem to be so often stuck. The words of another folk singer, Cheryl Wheeler, begin faintly to wend their way into my conscious: "And is it wise or lazy, holding tight to what you know? And is it brave or crazy, searching...?" I'm always searching that space, sniffing the air, calling out the subtle shades and examining them one by one, over and over, until I barely see the river at all. All that possibility, all that glorious, frightening, pregnant what-if, is always pushing me forward, holding me back, mesmerizing me with its always changing form reflected in the brilliant swirling dreamings of the river.

I've always said, "If you're going to dream, dream big." I recently revised that to say, "Dreaming is scary and dangerous, so if you're going to dream, dream big." I think I'm a part of a Bigger Dream, and I think I'm supposed to jump. But my toes are bleeding again because the river's edge just became the razor's edge, and I don't know how my big, scary, beautiful dream, alive with all the jubilant power of faith, squares with wisdom. But then rivers never were very square, were they? Only razors offer that kind of hard-edged certainty, and we bleed our frustration when we try too hard to walk that line.

It's almost a dream in itself, feeling my feet lifting lightly off of that painful edge and arching with sudden certainty, straining towards the current for everything they're worth. I suppose there's no going back now. All the what-ifs are disappearing behind me and I am discovering that I am de Dios, and de mio, and del rio, all at once.

--Teri.