Live Boldly 

Years ago we lived across the street from a couple who had emigrated from Ireland. My daughters were amused by the occasional scolding the mother gave her more mischievous child: “You’re a bold girl!” They laughed because the word had such a different meaning in the stories we read at home about bold adventurers or bold and courageous deeds. But the Irish usage opened a nice occasion for reflection on the double-edged virtue of boldness.

Little Carrie’s “boldness” was often rooted in simple curiosity that took her beyond prescribed boundaries and got her into awkward, sometimes dangerous situations. She was “bold” when something mattered more to her in the moment than remembering rules and warning. She tried things. She got into trouble.

But trouble, of course, is what heroes and adventurers get into as well. The bold ones break rules—not for the sake of breaking them, but because they’re following a call, a star, a guide, an urge, a love that takes them to a wider place where love is law and legalism gives way to a deeper, steadier, sturdier, more personal consent to a summoning. Jesus’ bold responses to the literal-minded keepers of the law are the best reminders of what it means to live boldly: to remember what the law is for and from whom it came, to break it when a higher law applies, to listen for guidance and pray for clarity and then act.

We need boldness now, this year, this season. To protect those who are threatened by guns and deportation and climate change, to speak truth to those abusing power, to care for water and soil and ecosystems, for others species and their fragile habitats requires boldness in identifying and acting against greed—our own and others’.

Advent meditations often direct us toward inwardness. It is “the dark time of the year” when burrowing and quieting, pondering and preparing are liturgically thematic. But all that preparation is for a purpose, which the Presbyterian Book of Common Worship articulates boldly: “Go out into the world in peace; have courage; hold on to what is good; return no one evil for evil; strengthen the fainthearted; support the weak, and help the suffering; honor all people; love and serve the Lord, rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit.” It’s an invigorating charge and an invitation to dare punishment, if need be, to follow the Spirit’s summons, even into streets and city councils and policy debates and places of squalid poverty—and even into the heart of our own homes where life-sustaining work sometimes requires boldness in uncomfortable conversations that keep the way open for Love.