Tightropes, risk aversion and life

It's one of those very occasional coincidences about which I am unreasonably and quietly smug. Several months after I did a paper on Carol Ann Duffy's poetry at a Theology Colloquium, a year or two ago, I touted her for poet laureate, - and there you go - she's nominated and appointed. I've enjoyed her poetry for years. The poem below is a favourite, one of those playful imaginings that takes a serious view of human risk-taking and fulfilment. In it we are participant, spectator and narrator - and we do understand that frisson of danger, the vicarious wishing it was us up there but glad it isn't, which is why we are the first to applaud his success.

Listening the other day to the CEO of the Health and Safety Executive, fighting back against the urban and rural myths about alleged Health and Safety regulations zealously applied to all things fun. She said something that I want to think about in relation to Christian discipleship. She said those responsible for risk-assessment had contracted risk aversion. her point was that a risk assessment was never meant to be a reason to prohibit an activity just because there was any perceived risk. Risk aversion is when decisions are made out of fear, when no matter what the activity someone wants to put the safety catch on, when excitement, thrill and uncertainty are so comprehensively extracted from life that all you are left with is bland, safe and a diminishment of the spirit.

So here's Carol Ann, exploring the ambiguous relationship we all have with risk and danger, and that inexplicable urge we shouldn't always repress, to step out on the tightrope, or as Jesus might have said, " to launch into the deep"

Talent

This is the word tightrope. Now imagine

a man, inching across it in the space

between our thoughts. He holds our breath.

There is no word net.

You want him  to fall, don't you?

I guessed as much; he teeters but succeeds.

The word applause is written all over him.

Carol Ann Duffy, Selected Poems (Penguin: 1999), Page 17

Comments

[Catriona]

Great poem.

I saw/heard Carol Ann Duffy on 'Songs of Praise' the other week and was impressed - she gave a reading of her poem 'Prayer.'

And she's right about risk assessment and risk aversion, as any professional risk assessor worth her/his salt would concur.

Interesting coincidence that yesterday's devotional notes talked about a clown evangelist who uses tight-rope walking carrying a cross as part of his medium of communication....