In my ongoing effort to attract a hip and progressive audience to my blog I decided to finally employ the aggressive outreach strategy of using latin phrases as post titles.
I know, I know, I’m way behind the curve on this one but I figure better late than never.
So what about it? What about duc in altum?
It means, “put out into deep water.”
The story goes that Jesus not only hopped into Simon’s fishing boat (referencing Jesus is also a crowd pleaser, by the way…) but that he started giving orders. And once they were under way he said something like, “Look, Simon. Here’s the deal. If you want to do this. If you REALLY want to do this, hanging out along the shore line is not good enough. You need to go all in. And going all in means taking on all the risk so you can receive all the reward.” (That’s not a direct quote.)
I think about the time we took our daughter’s fishing at a mountain lake. It wasn’t going well. And a man saw that it wasn’t going well and offered to help. He said, “Your bait is fine, you just need to put it where the fish are.” Surprise, surprise, they were in deeper water.
I think about the time a boss said to me, “If you want to become a good coach, you should really consider going to therapy.” So, I did. At first for him but soon enough, for me. Much deeper water.
I think about how I stayed on the fringes of our church community. Not a Roman Catholic, but doing a good impression. Our new priest asked me to join and I said, “I’ve thought about it a lot but I have too many questions, too many concerns.” And he said, “I’d like you on the inside to help us wrestle with those questions and confront those concerns.” And so I joined. And I was in much deeper water. And, with each devastating heartbreak, it keeps getting deeper. And I’m sticking with it.
I think about a conversation with my wife, Theresa, on the eve of our wedding anniversary: “What’s going well?, How are we stuck? What do we need to do differently?” We took a deep breath and swam out to deeper water.
And I think about my friend, Jim and his beautiful vessel, Shamrock, that lies directly in the path of Hurricane Florence. He has her anchored upriver but he tells me, “that will not provide any assurance that she will weather this one unscathed.”
In deep water, there are no assurances. There is only the truth that until we go we will never know.
DAVID BERRY is the author of “A More Daring Life: Finding Voice at the Crossroads of Change” and the founder of RULE13 Learning. He speaks and writes about the complexity of leading in a changing world. Connect with him on Twitter at @berrydavid.
