Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto

Reflection: Playing It Safe

Phyllis Cassel
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Palo Alto, CA

Will I ride the rollercoaster with you? Are there any loop-de-loops? No! A nice old fashioned rollercoaster? OK! While I continue to jabber about something random, I casually get into the car, not the front seat, and belt myself in tight. Then the fear sets in. Why am I doing this? I should never have said yes. This is a crazy thing to do. Slowly we reach the top. I have stopped talking, my eyes are bulging. I know there is no way out. I look down from the top but I can not scream. I am much too frightened. With mouth wide open, ready to collect bugs and dust, we start down. We reach the bottom. I gasp for breath. Again the car goes up, around a bend and down. With a few more turns and twists my body begins to relax with the flow, then suddenly its over. As I leave the roller coaster I realize I really did have a good time.

So where did I go on vacation last month? To ride the Copper Canyon Train in Mexico! The train ride was spectacular, including 87 tunnels, no lights, and 37 bridges. At times there were shear drops, and you could see the abandoned rail road cars that had fallen off the tracts but as long as I stayed inside the train cars, I was fine. We were only on the train two days the rest of the time we traveled via a 14 person van, 14 seats, 11 travelers and 9 working seat belts. One seat belt was repaired with some electrical tape to give the illusion that it would work. We were of course always to drink bottled water and did not eat from roadside stands. Only the state and federal roads were paved, and we did not spend much time on those. We hiked to several waterfalls. To reach one we took an ungraded road, went through the stream 4 times, then stopped for lunch in a nice clean location. We were joined by a couple of donkey’s who relieved us of any extra garbage so that packing-out our waste was real easy. We got back in the van and amazingly continued on down the path driving on what looked like an emergency exit path at my girl scout camp 50 years ago. Pretty soon we came upon a school bus with a bunch of kids who had been to the same waterfall and was about to return. That night we checked out the map and discovered that we had indeed been driving on a walking path.

However it was the cable supported swinging footbridges that gave me pause. The first one I encountered crossed a wide but shallow stream. Jose indicated that I should not use my walking sticks. Indeed, the thin metal sheets upon which I would walk already had too many holes giving an airy view of the stream below. The stream was only 5 feet down. I looked up, held my breath, and crossed. However, I thought the village dog that joined our walk, had the right idea. He ran through the stream.

The second footbridge was a new well built, modern cable suspended footbridge with high sides. It crossed a chasm of about 500 feet deep. My brain said that this was a perfectly safe bridge. There were however some boys having fun making this bridge sway and emitting what must be a universal scream at the same time. I think that there must be an international language for 10 year old boys who cross such spaces for I recognized the sound. I looked down in the chasm, I looked at the boys having fun and I noticed another path around this chasm. I choose to go around on the alternate path.

The third footbridge was more troublesome. It was over another deep chasm at the end of a hike. The alternative crossing was to hike 50 steps down, cross a narrow wooden bridge and return 50 steps up. I still had to cross the chasm. The metal sheet flooring of this footbridge had better cross bracing to walk on than the first, but the hand railing on one side was broken part way across. As one walked the broken side behaved a little like an according opening and closing, opening and closing. Well. I could not go back and I could not go down any more stairs, my knee already hurt. So I looked up went across holding the one good side until I was securely beyond the broken railing.

As you can see, I made it. I realized when I finished writing that I had chosen the light and easy vignettes as an explanation of choices for what really makes life challenging. But sometimes it is more fun than facing reality.

 

Sermon: Playing It Safe by Rev. Amy Zucker Morgenstern