Daily Prayer, 27 March

I am a big fan of Mike Rowe. One of the things on which we agree, but he manages to articulate much better than I could is the obsession we seem to have these days around safety. He calls his idea “Safety Third,” and I agree with him that our obsession with safety has become unhealthy. This obsession seeps in innocuously in the things we see and hear, like the announcement aboard ships when beginning a set of practice drills that includes the sentence “Safety is paramount.” No it isn’t, and the more we say it is the more we become averse to taking risks, and that’s no kind of way to live. It is by assuming risk to explore new ground, physically and metaphorically, that we begin to better understand ourselves and the world around us. So live a daring life full of risks!

In the Navy we talk a lot about risk. At the end of every brief we go through the Operational Risk Management Matrix to show that we’ve considered the risks involved in an evolution or operation and how we plan to mitigate those risks. Doing this acknowledges that we are willing to accept a certain level of risk. This is an official way of doing what we do less formally all the time, in some way or another, every day. If safety were really paramount we’d never leave the pier—or even our house—just wrap ourselves in bubble wrap and lie on the carpeted floor. That is, until you read the safety warning label on the bubble wrap.

The point is that we cannot ever completely isolate ourselves from all risks, but must expose ourselves to it if we are going to truly live our lives. The poet William Arthur Ward explains why in his poem titled “Risk”:

To laugh is to risk appearing a fool,
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.
To reach out to another is to risk involvement,
To expose feelings is to risk exposing your true self.
To place your ideas and dreams before a crowd is to risk their loss
To love is to risk not being loved in return,
To hope is to risk despair,
To try is to risk failure.

But risks must be taken because
the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
The person who risks nothing,
does nothing, has nothing, is nothing.
He may avoid suffering and sorrow,
But he cannot learn, feel, change, grow or live.
Chained by his servitude he is a slave
who has forfeited all freedom.
Only a person who risks is free.

LET US PRAY

Lord of Life, teach us to live daring lives filled with well-considered risks. May we never act foolishly by being either too rash or too careful, for growth only happens when we reach out farther than we have before. Keep us safe even as we accept more risk, do the same for our families as they face risks of their own, and grant all of us the peace of Your Presence, for You are holy always, now and forever, and to the ages of ages.

AMEN