Our Deepest Fear

Last night I watched Coach Carter on DVD. I had refused to pay attention to a movie I thought was just another cliche. You know, the one about a fearless coach who saves inner city black athletes from the ghetto.

Had I gone to see the movie back in the winter, I would have discovered something beyond a worn out plot. In an early scene, Coach Carter (Samuel Jackson) asks one of his rebellious basketball players, "What is your deepest fear?" The boy looks at him in utter confusion and keeps walking out the gym---into the very fear that haunts him throughout the movie. Fast speed ahead when he returns to the team after watching his drug-dealing mentor gunned down, and we hear Timo Cruz speak from Marianne Williamson's now famous words:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.' We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we subconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

I found myself wishing I'd watched the movie earlier---if only to hear this quote. It speaks to the unlimited potential of all people to reach beyond ordinary boundaries, to conquer those things we fear most.