Walking the beach one day, Gunilla Norris sees a young child run-determined on very unsteady legs-into the water. The infant's intensity is palpable. The mother sits some distance away, outwardly comfortable enough about her child's safety not to interfere with his adventure. With a wet sagging diaper, the young boy runs into the water with the half-weaving, half-stumbling motion of infants who have just learned to walk. Would he fall? Or, perhaps not stop until in over his head? There are so many things that could go wrong.

But the child knew when to stop, and when was deep enough. Seeing the water lap against his chubby thighs, it is clear that from his perspective these small waves are giants. He is with something VERY BIG.

Standing in the water with enthusiastic concentration, his small body thrums like an instrument. He turns, still deep in the experience, walks unsteadily out of the water and over the thin strip of pebbles at the water's edge. He makes a "kind of circle," and heads back into the water, again up to his thighs, savoring another experience of the sea. He repeats his foray seven or eight times, as if verifying what this wet, cold living thing called water is to him.

Even yards away Gunilla could feel the exhilaration of the boy's experience. Finally, fully satisfied, the boy stands in his wet diaper--with arms outflung--and begins an unintelligible but eloquent speech to the water, to the gulls, to the sand, to the world. Obviously not yet speaking with words, he was most certainly speaking with his heart.

This is a story about living wholehearted.

And yet. Somewhere along the way, someone will tell you no. You can't do that. Or, no you must be careful; watch out! Or, no that is so imprudent. Or, more simply, you just need to grow up.

And if you can't grow up, at the very least do your best to look good, because people are watching, after all. Patricia Madson writes about the shock of losing a teaching job at a university. Thinking she had done everything flawlessly, until it occurred to her that she had been working only "to be worthy of tenure." So, she writes, "I had not been true to myself. I need another way of living that doesn't require a script. I need to listen to and trust my self."

Just like the boy in the waves. And I want to be that young boy. I am drawn to the eagerness, the passion, and the wholeheartedness.

But here's the deal: I already am that young boy. He is inside of me, needing only to see the light of day.

This is where it is so easy to get tripped up. We ask for the list. What are the steps to live wholehearted? How many days will it take? And what will it cost? So. We're back to who's watching and what is there to prove.

I'm having a conversation with an old friend. And we're talking about things middle-aged men talk about; receding hairline, expanding waistline and loss of virility. And he asks me, "Is there anything in your life that you are passionate about?" I must admit that the question kind of stumps me. Being a good Midwestern boy, passion was not exactly something we talked about. It was akin to boastfulness; which means it made it on that sin scale somewhere between card playing and dancing. But the more I thought about it, the easier the answer came, "Yes, there is something I feel passionate about, gardening."
Of course my friend is incredulous, "Gardening," he said, "gardening is so, so self-centered."

I thought about it, but didn't like the alternatives. And then it hit me. I remembered the first time when I really knew I was a gardener. And I realized that for the first time in my life I was non-self-conscious. Completely non-self-centered. For the first time in my life I cared about something bigger than my own little petty issues. I was with something VERY BIG. Gardening wasn't something I did; gardening was something that was done unto me.

Lord, I don't want to know the reason for it all,  

I want to see the wonder of it all. Rabbi Abraham Heschel

Being passionate will keep you alive. And we come to feel how very big is the depth of Life even in the smallest of activities. We trust that we are intended for ecstasy, that each day we are meant to be steeped in mystery, and so to remember our true lives.

People living from this strong sense of love and connection are whole-hearted. What they have in common is a sense of courage, Brené Brown tells us. "I want to separate courage and bravery. Courage, the original definition of courage, when it first came into the English language, it's from the Latin word cor, meaning heart, and the original definition was to tell the story of who are with your whole heart... and wholehearted folks had, very simply, the courage to be imperfect. They had the compassion to be kind to themselves first, and then to others. Because as it turns out, we can't practice compassion with other people if we can't treat ourselves kindly. And the last is, they had connection--this was the hard part--as a result of authenticity. They were willing to let go of who they thought they should be in order to be who they were."

Letting go is all about vulnerability. It is circling back to wade into the waves one more time. And we can only do that when we are not afraid.

Fear tells you "I'll make you safe." Love says, "You are safe."

Along the way we come to learn that what makes us vulnerable also makes us beautiful. Yes, vulnerability can be that place of shame and fear and our struggle for worthiness, but it appears that it's also the birthplace of joy, and creativity, of belonging, of love.

I couldn't run out into the waves today. But I spent some time under the arbor that leads to my lower garden. The rose Constance Spry scrambles up and over the arbor and through the adjacent Japanese Snowbell tree. It is big, bounteous, unstinting and unrestrained. There I stood, with arms outflung, doing my best rendition of an eloquent speech to the cathedral spires of fir and cedar, the Western Red Tanager at our feeder, and to the clouds that drifted through our cerulean summer sky.

If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in  

despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life. Albert Camus