Let Go, Let God and Woohoo! When You Do

I'm back at Black Rock Retreat Center in Lancaster County, PA for
another amazing week of prayer and study on Pope JPII's Theology of
the Body (for the previous post, search this blog for Black Rock; it's
an August post of last year... For more on the TOB, just click the tag
on the right side o' the blog).

One of the highlights of this week of intense theological study and
discussion is the trip to the 300 foot water slide on the retreat
center's grounds. Sounds random, right? What's a 300 foot water slide
got to do with God's original plan for creating us male and female and
calling us to love, our fall into fear, shame, and sin, then His
coming into the world in the flesh to redeem us and make us one again
with Him in the Body of Christ? Well, uh... everything!

The slide is buried like a hidden treasure in the deep woods, and
spills into the tea brown waters of Lake (a generous term) Hiawatha (a
Native American term). Man, it's awesome.

After two days of rigorous reflection and a challenging invitation to
trust and walk ever more deeply into the gospel call to selfless
surrender and love, we are invited to leap quite literally into the
deep! To let go and let God take us into the deep waters of mercy!
What an exhilarating journey past the shallows, past the lies of the
culture about what it means to be human, and into beauty. Into a
dignity and a reverence for life and creation that brings real joy!
But it takes a letting go. A surrender to this new gravitational pull
of Grace. And we must abandon the old orbits around old habits, and
take our hands off of the weathered, worn, wooden handles of our life
and feel the rush into a divine life! To dive into our destiny, which
St. Peter said is a "share in the divine nature"! When St. Irenaeus
jumped onto the water slide of grace in the second century, he too
cried out with joy ("woohoo" in the ancient Greek) with words that
sing: "The glory of God is man fully alive!"