the impossible brightness, again

"It is not the critic who counts." Almost a year ago, I wrote a letter on my blog about that. I was talking about the cocoon we spin around ourselves, one that is supposed to protect us from things failing or falling apart or changing uncontrollably. I was talking about loving, daring greatly, how in that work and wonder the critic in us, the cocoon-spinner, does not count.Far beyond romantic love, I spin cocoons of protection around every paper, every possible declined application, every possible mistake, every possibly possible ... you understand, I think. I spin cocoons of anonymity and safety, of carefully worded posts or no posts at all, of endless caveats of when I become more of ... then, I will do and be and think the braver things.But daring greatly is not about the someday marvelous thing we might do. It is not the moment we suddenly defy ourselves and our cocoons and spite the critic in us. Those are marvelous moments, yes, but they are not all there is to daring greatly.Daring greatly is believing that you carry in you the impossibly bright love of God. It is about entering into the impossible brightness that God prepared for us before we did any marvelous daring thing. It is in all of our tiny revelations, our smallest moments. Daring greatly is saying, "I need to talk to you about this," three fourths of the way through the long flight when you've already argued and made peace and you think, if I say it now I will surely ruin everything. Daring greatly is pressing the "send" button when you're so sure that if I send that, it will be rejected. Daring greatly is getting on your knees when you think every trace of God's calling and purpose has disappeared, and even then, saying, Our Father. And it's showing ourselves to care too much, to be un-aloof and earnest and eager and people of a brighter believing:it's doing the dishes and trying to find the Chinese restaurant in the unfamiliar town so you can do something spontaneous for someone you love, it's making and remaking the same plans as you learn the rhythm of a friend's heart, and it's helping on a logic problem even though you could say you don't have time,it's praying with, not just for, it's being unembarrassed in the restaurant or the bank or the escalator in the mall to pray blessing over the stranger in the grey flannel two steps up from you,it's admitting that we are lights in the world, even in our yoga pants during rainy Mondays when we feel the least influential, admitting that we are lights that God would have put on a lampstand to illumine the house long before we ever thought ourselves worthy.Because love is impossibly bright, and it is already alive in us. Because Jesus has gifted us His brightness, not for ourselves but for the house, for the stranger who knocks on the door, for another's stepping toward Jesus.Daring greatly is not just for the marvelous things that defy gravity - it is for the every day revealing and sharing of ourselves as bearers of the impossible brightness of God's love.That is the impossible brightness. That is daring greatly.Love,hilary