Living With An Open Hand

In the past few months, as winter has continued to bear down on Bonnyville, Alberta I have become a little house hermit seeking warmth and comfort - and have succumbed to the experience of assorted Star Trek reruns with my new husband. Gah! I’m admitting publicly for the first time; I am actually enjoying them.

While the opening narrative of this franchise of shows has been edited over the years, the heart of the matter has remained. “Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five year mission; to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.”

When Brian and I first met, it didn’t take us long to realize something remarkable was happening and this ‘something remarkable’ quickly opened into love and then marriage and yes…as is now public knowledge…a soon-to-be baby carriage. We were and are boldly going where neither one of us has before.

At some point on this journey, we discovered the language of ‘living with an open hand.’ We believe it started from my experiences with my contemplative prayer class, ‘Living from the Heart.’ It has since carried over into our daily life and has even been used by a pastor-friend in our post-marriage spiritual direction.

What does ‘living with an open hand’ mean to me? Not unlike the mission and mandate of the assorted Star Trek crews, there is an element of mystery, unknown, discovery, expectation, hope and…trust.

I may not be in a fancy, warp-speed space travel vehicle exploring new star systems but I am experiencing some cultural transitions involving new life forms, styles of communication and associated risks.

Living with an open hand is a very physical, tactile form of prayer for me. It’s a posture of trust and surrender. It’s risky and unfamiliar because I am more used to a clenched fist surrounding my values and wants. Control has been the more familiar path in my life, or perhaps better understood as the illusion of control – including control of circumstances and others.

Living with an open hand is an act of release, an act of freedom. It is living with arms wide open, experiencing without a shadow of a doubt the goodness and perseverance of Love - of God. In the midst of uncertainty, pain, sorrow, confusion, delight, amazement, ordinariness, fear and wonderment.

A quote from author Jeff Imbach, in a little photo frame in our bathroom, reads “choice becomes a real possibility when longing is accepted and fulfillment is celebrated but not demanded. This is the place of freedom.”

Living with an open hand means less demanding and more accepting. It means I sit with the honest truths of my wants and desires, I acknowledge the goodness of their arrival/completion/fulfillment and I open my hands in celebration of the unknown future. This is a paradigm shift. I don’t run and hide from the unknown, I dance party it up with the unknown! This experience is revealing to me all the ‘what ifs’ that often crowd my mind, my words and my behavior instead of the ‘what is.’

To be a starship Captain, the ‘what is’ of the mission is the motivating factor, not all the unknown ‘what ifs.’ The choice to explore and discover; to risk and to leap; to hope yet again is ever present and ever opportune. So, just for today, I sit back in my chair, I breathe deep and I say, ‘Engage!’

*photo credit to Robb Penner, hands of little Lucy Ireland, his daughter.