To Shake the Sleeping Self
Longing for courage in an age of comfort
It was 2011, hipsters were cool, and van life was at its all-time high. And Jedidiah Jenkins, a man who fell into both camps, was unsettled by his comfort and lack of adventure. So a year before his 30th, he decided to ride his bicycle 14,000 miles from Oregon State down the coast to Patagonia. A man, a bicycle, and the open road.
The adventure was documented in his best selling book To Shake The Sleeping Self, where Jenkins wrestles with his sexuality (being gay in a conservative evangelical context), his faith, and with the deep human longing to move from comfort - a nice house, the latest iPhone, being in the know on the latest tv show, and enough money in the bank to go on a couple holidays a year - toward courage.
Jed sought to answer the question “Am I living the life I want to live and becoming the person I want to be?1”
For centuries, humans have looked to the open road to reorient ourselves anew. In Jenkins’ words:
“I have learned this for certain: if discontent is your disease, travel is medicine. It resensitizes. It opens you up to see outside the patterns you follow. Because new places require new learning. It forces your childlike self back into action. When you are a kid, everything is new. You don’t know what’s under each rock, or up the creek. So, you look. You notice because you need to. The world is new2.”
Travelling helps us move beyond ourselves and enter wider places, and if we allow it, we can return home with renewed vigour.
But what do you do when you can’t afford to take a year off work, familial responsibilities, or the grind of everyday life?
How does one pursue a courageous life in a world that more often than not leaves our souls atrophied by the comforts of Netflix, brunches, and the next cheap dopamine hit?
God’s Empowering Presence
A life of courage is not mustering up more faith, self-confidence, or being like David Goggins. Beware when of any preacher that says “we must get back to the church of Acts,” they sucked just as we do.
Courage is not the opposite of fear or admitting weakness; no, the opposite of courage is “apathy, disenchament, its despair3.”
In other words, a life without courage is a life without adventure. But again, if you don’t have enough money to hit the open road or hop on the next flight off the tarmac, that’s okay - for I’d argue the greatest adventure one can begin is upward and inward.
As philosopher James K.A. Smith notes, “God is the country we’re looking for4.
Courage for Christians, you see, is found through deeper levels of intimacy and surrender to the Spirit of God, who brought order to chaos (Genesis 1) and raised Christ from the dead.
It's about the spirit that hovers and moves and is right here and right now working and fighting back against a spirit of darkness, distraction, and death.
We see this courageous life fully displayed throughout the weird and wonderful book of Acts. As these ragamuffin Jesus followers came alive and were animated by the Spirit of the living God, they became a people of hope, weirdness, and self-giving love.
Their courage was not of their own, they were infused with what the late theologian Gordon Fee called “God’s empowering presence.”
Really, the book of Acts is not about Paul, Peter, or Luke, no no no the main character is the Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit.
It is by and through the Spirit of God alone that Peter, a once blubbering crybaby who failed Jesus time and time again, into the man who could courageously declare that God in Jesus was on the move, bringing “new life, forgiveness, new hope and power” for everyone and anyone5.
You see, there are no heroes in the Christian faith, only ordinary, broken, pimple-faced, staggering and half-hearted men and women who partnered with the Spirit of God.
And in a time a time of crisis and comfort, most of us have zero control over geopolitical issues, the price of a carton of eggs, and the war in the Middle East – what we have most control over is becoming custodians of our souls.
We have a choice every day to either give our souls gaze toward distraction and disenchament or learn to retune to the Holy Spirit that calls us up and out toward a life of beauty and adventure.
This Christian life is one of courage, and sometimes, perhaps more often than we think, courage is found and cultivated in small daily acts of obedience. In the unsexy and ordinary places we find ourselves right here and right now.
Maybe it takes more courage to obey the Spirit’s voice in saying hi to the annoying divorced neighbour who drinks too much and talks too loudly, or forgiving a wayward father who was anything but supportive, or putting the phone down long enough to attend to the wounds of a friend.
The best news is we don’t have to do more or try harder. This life of courage begins with the paradox of surrender—surrender to the mysterious, awesome work of the Spirit of God, which hovers and woos and moves and shakes our sleeping souls awake to his work happening all around us.
We don’t need to hit the open road to realise that God is our home, the place where our hearts are undone and at the same time, at home. And when our hearts are home, we are free to be people of courage, welcoming other exhausted, weary, and burdened hearts home.
Suleika Jaouad, “Interview: On Shaking the Sleeping Self with Jedidah Jenkins,” on The Isolation Journals with Suleika Jaouad, Febuary 10, 2021.
Jedidiah Jenkins, To Shake the Sleeping Self: A Journey from Oregon to Patagonia, and a quest for life with no regrets, (New York: Convergent, 2018), 1.
Ryan Holiday, Courage is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave, (New York: Portfolio, 2021).
James K.A. Smith, On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts, (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2019), 51.
I take this from NT Wright, who wrote that by the Spirit’s work in Acts we see “Peter, who only a few weeks before had been crying like a baby because he’d lied and cursed and denied even knowing Jesus, found himself on his feet explaining to a huge crowd that something had happened that had changed the world forever.” See N.T. Wright, Acts for Everyone, (Louisville: SPCK, 2008), 2.