Spent this early Tuesday morning as I always do–over coffee and great conversation with a group of men seeking the truth. Fellow pilgrims who are awake and aware, and trying to become more so. This meeting occupies a permanent place on my weekly schedule because I am living out my PURPOSE through a PROCESS that includes placing friendship, fellowship, learning, teaching, and seeking among my top PRIORITIES. Done so.
Today we shared what we did on our Easter Sundays. We all gathered our families together. We all worshipped the Risen Christ at our various churches. We all ate a lot, drank a little, laughed a ton, and basked in a cool but sunny spring day. All of us were and are amazed by the hope and joy and promise of “Paid In Full.”
One of us, however, noticed some troubling nuances on Sunday within the melody line of Easter joy. Some discordant notes. Distracted, bored, listless faces in a jam-packed church. Many unfamiliar faces. Jam-packed only on this one Sunday, along with one other in late December, with plenty of seats available on the other 50 Sundays. But this Sunday, it was “SRO”–Standing Room Only. Young men, fit men, able in most other ways, were unable to look up, and around, to see the mothers with babies in arm and grandmothers standing in the aisles. For the entire service. Many of those same men led their fidgety families straight out the door right after communion. The Masters tournament may have been a higher priority than the Master’s defeat of death.
Regardless of whether one is a believer or not, religious or not, spiritual or not, THIS is the crux of the matter: who wants to wake up, and live? And who wants to slumber on, dead inside, waiting for the inevitable death of the body decades after the suicide of the soul?
75 spins around the yellow star, more or less, is all we get. If you’re my age or close, you’ve finished over 70% of them. What will the remaining 30% look like? Will you be paying any attention to them? Awake, aware, active, and alive? Or depressed, distracted, drugged, and dead?
I fight every day to wake up. It’s not a “one-and-done” thing. It’s a choice and a commitment every single day to “feel” life. It requires a willingness to soar the heights AND trudge the valleys. To dance AND to fall flat on my face. To taste the wine AND the mud. To risk loving AND rejection. To fight fear AND death, every day.
It’s not easy, but it’s a great adventure and full of LIFE. I get my energy from the source of all life, responding to His awesome and personal call to LIVE my life, using fully the gifts I have been given in the service of others.
I invite you to join me!
It’s a matter of life and death.
BUILT TO LEAD 
Great post, Jim. Brilliant and courageous. Loved it.
Awesome post Jim. AND, more importantly, you are more awake, more alive, more energized, more engaged, more aligned, more aware, and more Jim. As you and I really awaken here’s the coolest part. We become the original we already are. We get comfortable in our own skin. We realize that masters don’t try to emulate other humans and don’t try to be anything they are NOT. Masters simply become who they always were.
Minus the FEAR.
Minus the fear that told them to fake it. Minus the fear that told them they would never really make it. Minus the fear that told them they did NOT have what it takes. Minus the fear that told them to hold onto where and what they were. To settle. Subtract that…
See you on the road, pilgrim.