Sometimes I feel small and timid. I was told as a child that I was shy—too shy. Truthfully, I am a natural introvert and also, shyness was one way I hid from my mother’s eager attentiveness. Still, sometimes my shyness turned into silence and then to self-deprecation. I wondered whether I was really a mouse and maybe that is why I’m frightened of mice—such tiny, skittering rodents. Why does everyone in comics scream EEEEK! at the sight of a mouse?
I recall a poster one of my young sons, full of mischief and hormonal chutzpah, hung in his room. It pictured a bunch of hapless lemmings rushing towards a cliff, some already spilling over to their deaths—save one lemming who ran along with the doomed group grinning, and with a life preserver around his middle.
I doubt that my son had more than his own biological urges as a pre-teen, but I do know that the poster exactly portrayed his humor and presaged the future of his own humor-bound self-care. Professionals would call him mildly risk averse. I would call him wise.
What is a lemming anyway? A lemming is a short-tailed rodent related to voles, found in the Arctic tundra. Sometimes lemmings actually do commit mass suicide when they jump off cliffs. This is a result of their migratory behavior, driven by strong biological urges when the population density becomes too great.
Webster tells us that “lemming” also can refer to a person who unthinkingly joins a mass movement, especially one that is a shortsighted headlong rush to destruction. That description fits some individuals, or groups, or religions, or whole countries. I felt that reckless when I shed my shy cover and announced myself as a woman seeking to be a priest in the equally reticent Episcopal Church. Inside I felt scared like a mouse, or reckless like this lemming without her life preserver. Lots of loving help got me through.
Jesus the Christ is remembered as calling people to follow. Are they to follow like lemmings? Follow at all costs? Scatter like mice? Jesus also told the parable of a Good Samaritan who, for good reasons of his own, would never be a follower, but who, out of his own tradition, practiced the ethic Jesus encouraged. Jesus had a strong vision of God’s Compassion spreading, connecting beyond our differences: Everyone is your neighbor. We can absolve Jesus of any malice of forethought about his insistence that people summon the courage to follow him—not like hapless lemmings but more like courageous fools for Christ-like compassion. Jesus, however, also assigned 72 elders to go ahead to prepare the way, and told any followers to travel in pairs.
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What can absolve us Americans from our own lemming-like culture, our own lemming-like lifestyles—running too fast, not getting very far, making hasty impulsive decisions, overvaluing our precious independence, collectively and individually, often bearing lethal weaponry, and always failing to consider exactly who we are, what it is we desire, why we are doing it, where we are headed, what our purpose is—not to mention tending to go on out there alone and brave without allies?
What will stop us? Will a leader who is wise and compassionate, forceful but not forcing? Would you follow without fear or self-doubt, even when it appeared as if that leader might lead you into dangerous territory? What if you followed a leader and ended up either dead or radically transformed forever? We all have choices even when we don’t see them. Any choice involves risk. Most choices are driven by enormously inclusive visions, such as everyone’s being a neighbor.
My son would make sure he was protected before he followed any “lemmings.” I would waffle and hesitate, asking a million clarifying questions before I set out on a visionary quest. No one wanted to follow Jesus, especially into enemy territory, like Jerusalem, or if it meant loving any supposed enemy. He kept going,, not recanting his way or purpose, and they all thought he was as foolish as a lemming.
Everyone is different. To follow a vision of any size is never simple unless you actually are a lemming. It’s okay to carry inner tubes, ask a million clarifying questions, take others with you. Life is a grand experiment. I steadied myself in God, and carried many supporters inside me whose voices of love and encouragement I heard, but not with my ears. My most steady companions on my way were my tears—sweet lubricants, healing my impatience and my mistakes, while keeping the vision alive.
This image below is what I felt like, heading out alone, praying for courage, and determined on a new path, trusting the presence of God, believing in my children’s hearts— accompanied by tears and fears. I kept going like this baby snowy owl—unsteady like a toddler determined one day to fly, and not looking back —much.
What kind of follower are you?
