Candle, Not a Torch: Book Review of “On the Edge- An Odyssey”
Tags: Memoir, Success, Odyssey, Personal Growth, Spirituality

One of the themes of this blog is the opportunity given to each of us to identify an inner capacity to both discover and disempower the voices that urge despair. Commonly, the opportunity is presented in the guise of failure or even tragedy.

Not everyone takes up that opportunity, of course. And too often people can vest their identity in beliefs that no longer serve them, or which were rooted in misunderstanding, or even just rooted in tradition and social expectations rather than a solid foundation. As related in the Gospel of Matthew (Matthew 7:24–27), the word is given to all, but some will respond and build their house on rock and others will continue to build on sand.

My friend Stephen Murphy has lived on sand, both literally and metaphorically, and his first book “On the Edge-An Odyssey”[1] is as much a record of a highly interesting life as it is a fable of how he found solid rock. As you should expect from a book subtitled “An Odyssey,” “On The Edge” wanders far and wide. It begins here in Seattle, on the occasion of the author’s imminent relocation from the University of Washington to Harvard Business School in Cambridge, MA. And it’s there the first lesson freezes him solid as the Charles River in winter.

Our parents and instructors, bless their hearts, often express their love for us with a desire that we march, rather than wander. And so, a young man carries with him the weight of expectations, along with pressure to adhere to the safe, the familiar, and the proven path to success. It’s often a sign of a looming crisis when one is striving for success without yet having paused to contemplate that “success” may lack the definition one assumes.

And so here, having achieved “success” with admission to Harvard, something is not working at all. Our author is overwhelmed, anxious, alone. It’s a crisis of identity, of obligation, and of failure all at once. Where to go? The author considers, and fortunately forgoes, a direct line off the Memorial Bridge to drowning in the frozen river below. Instead, he is pulled to wander into St. Paul’s church on Harvard Square. Some forces are stronger than gravity.

There he encounters a priest who manifests mystical healing in the utterly simple way much healing works: a simple act of outreach. “Tell me what’s going on, my son,” he says and from there the confessional becomes, like Superman’s phone booth, a place of transformation.

This forever nameless father of the church advises the author “[r]est assured — you will find your path. And know that our Lord loves you, without condition, until the end of the world.” And so, released of the weight of anguish, our author exits Harvard Business school without a degree, but with a memory that will serve, decades later, as the anchor point of this memoir.

What we can conclude from this, and myriad other episodes in this work, is how often joy is to be found in service to others, rather than accruing comforts and accolades for oneself. This theme will appear again as our author serves his country as Naval officer during the Vietnam war, doles out gifts to children in Rio, accepts gifts of eggs in Malawi, finds politics and US government service enjoyable (and the throne game of political power much less so), teaches appreciative students, mentors UW undergraduates, and assists entrepreneurs across Latin and South America.

Always the light returns when the author can share his gifts with others. And it dims when disconnection and transition leave him solitary and self-absorbed. This is a paradox that applies to all of us: “he [she, or they] who clings to his life will lose it.” It’s in self-emptying that one finds “success.”

That’s a lesson in spiritual physics: a full cup cannot receive anything new or further. As Richard Rohr observed “[n]othing new…can come to us when we are full of ourselves, our agendas, and our own points of view.” And so, giving, and relinquishing the need to have things done “our way,” are empowering approaches to life, for they open us up to receive the gifts of Being and, ultimately, to resurrection.

Throughout his story, our author has an active social life. He is too much of a gentleman to spill details of his liaisons across the years and the nations, though among the photos there is a gorgeous studio shot of our author and an Afro-Brazilian lady in the late 1970’s, wearing nothing other than interest in one another. Such a refreshing thing to see love and sexuality embraced without shame, across race and culture, for the gifts of God that they are.

Unsurprising given all the continent-hopping business endeavors related here, our author nonetheless lacks a permanent liaison. Mr. Murphy is hardly unique among human beings, especially young of age, to feel the experiences one can link to one’s identified self are the most important thing in life. As with the definition of “success” he carried with him to Harvard, he lives, as most of us do, carrying an assumption the purpose of our existence is to collect interesting experiences. And, equally so, no impetus to question that assumption rarely arrives without grief as a companion.

For by the early 90’s, our author is in service to the Bush Administration as the Director of TV and Film for the US Information Agency, and the “service” aspects of his life are taking a back seat to politics or, in the evening, “hitting the disco circuits.” His mother’s passing awakens him from his dogmatic slumbers. Leaving the Voice of America offices by the back stairs, the author and his tears wander around in the cold until, again, a church appears.

There, a Monsignor applies a hand on his shoulder, the dignity of hearing his grief, and the comfort of prayers for his mother’s soul. Simple acts of outreach received as priceless gifts. When my unfaithful wife divorced me, the hand of a priest on my shoulder was perhaps the most powerful sign of hope and survival I received. Our author would survive his grief too, though, as in most such cases, with his gravitational center altered and unmoored.

Christianity is perhaps unique in that it is as much about God’s search for us as it is about our search for God. It’s not simply that God forgives. It’s that to give forgiveness, and to receive forgiveness, is to experience God. God not only hears our prayers, He invites us to ask ourselves why we always assume everything is up to us alone to fix. “Why don’t you call?” God asks, parentally.

And so, one day several years hence, when the priest invites all in the church to “come forth in the name of Christ” our author slumps in his pew, feeling a terror of imagined inadequacy. And, I hope, God smiles. For here is yet another of His beloved that doesn’t yet know how deeply forgiven, how worthy he is, and what potential he holds. But our author will come to see.

Back in Seattle, real potential appears in the form of one Vicki Gilfillan Daly, a widow with a leadership role in the Rotary organization. Their courtship intersects with September 11, 2001, and its moment represents its own calling. Another opportunity to find purpose in service, here in the form of the Peace Corps. Now a change of mind has truly taken place: the jaunts to Latin America, where he is free to roam and lead, are now intertwined with the growing bond to Vicki, to their marriage commitment, and to the intent required to sustain that bond over time and, often, physical distance. A commitment, I’m happy to say, they’ve maintained to each other ever since.

Whether we’re to be buffeted by the winds of life or to sail them boldly is up to us. To sail them, though requires both faith and intention. It requires integrating the initiative to pursue goals with acceptance that perhaps “success” is not what you first imagined when the pursuit began.

Over time, skilled life sailors learn expectations can not only obscure weaknesses in one’s assumed definition of “success,” but make one unaware there’s any obscuring going on. The Gospel is chock full of examples where Jesus does just this sort of de-obscuring, archetypically, in the form “you have heard it said that…. But I say to you….” (Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:21–48) Here, as always, the “but” negates all that came before. And in this case, what came before includes judgment, tradition, and social expectations.

Author Stephen Murphy’s adventures, failures, successes, regrets, and joy illustrate what is true for all of us: life is a constant circling dance, drifting off center or off-beat and then returning. It is a yin-yang that wobbles. So whether you enjoy this book as a “walk down memory lane for boomers,” or find it an “instructive tale for young professionals,” I think you’ll find it an enjoyable read, and a reminder that to be “on the edge” is to always be a bit off-balance, as pre-definitions of success give way to success itself.

[1] Stephen Murphy, “On The Edge: An Odyssey,” (Odyssey Chapters, 2016); online at: https://amzn.to/3pD4JIn