Surrender
Dear Friend,
Simple things first. Stable scan this week. Time enough for one more teaspoon of sugar. Maybe even another after that. Hope.
This has been a week of contemplating surrender. What might it mean to abandon one’s ego? One’s falsely-protective false self? To choose to surrender one’s choice. This prayer found me while I searched for the Merton Prayer. It is just a portion of the Brother Charles de Foucauld Prayer of Abandon, and it has lingered all week.
"Father, I abandon myself into your hands; do with me what you will. Whatever you may do, I thank you: I am ready for all, I accept all. Let only your will be done in me, and in all your creatures. I wish no more than this, O Lord."
Would that I could pray this prayer from my heart. Would that I could plan in hope, yet hold those plans loosely. Would that I might see any interruption, any imposition, any inconvenience as a gift from God. An invitation into surrender and into unimaginable withness. That I might accept that invitation with gratitude.
Abi often told me after her diagnosis that she lived more each day than she had lived in all the days prior to her arrival in cancer-world….combined. I have heard friends insist, that while they would never choose tragedy or suffering, or wish it on another, the breadth and depth of their gratitude for the gift of Life erupted when suffering released them from the myth of their self-control over their own circumstances. Over outcomes. When they let everything happen to themselves. Beauty and Terror. In gratitude. This rings true.
Yesterday, a friend (paraphrasing, of course): “I have been walking this walk for many years. I believed I was gone. Twice. Not because of the fear or terror that I felt, but instead, because of their traces. Because of the presence of their absences. There was no pain, no struggle, yet I was conscious. Perhaps more conscious than I had ever been, and able to recognize the peace in which I lay. I imagined this must be the place.”
Rohr defines suffering as whenever we are not in control.
This same friend wondered aloud if cancer, might be the very thing that allows him to see clearly, or if, perhaps, suffering is a Windex for the soul that helps to clear away the oily film that accumulates on our lenses of our hearts. I don’t think cancer or any other suffering is necessary, or even sufficient to regain our eyesight, but it’s hard to argue that it never helps, just as it is hard to argue that it always does.
Richard Rohr defines suffering as whenever we are not in control. Maybe, but perhaps the degree of suffering depends on the tenacity with which we cling to the illusion of control. That seems to be the case for me, anyway. Sometimes I harden my heart at suffering. Double down on my own sovereignty over my own circumstances, slip into my shame blazer, buckle down and work harder. Sometimes it “works” for a while, and I lose weight or save more money or whatever. But the folly is always exposed by some crisis I fail to anticipate or properly manage. Always.
Other times, suffering softens my heart and I surrender, and it becomes far easier to see and hear and touch and taste and breathe in the aroma that animates Life. Would that make some suffering worthy of our gratitude?
This is not mine to answer for you. But that is what I dimly hear.
Grace A friend from thirty years and a thousand miles ago returns to remind you: A musician trusts his heart when it says: "Draw your bow across the strings." When it says: "Set the bow on your lap and Count. To. Three." The friend pays the tab, then slips away before you can talk it through. One. Two. Three. Grace.
I have whispered my love into the ears of those in the east and west and those beyond your world, in a language that they can hear and apprehend. I have given them a different part of the song to sing. Do not be afraid. It’s okay that you hear their parts. They, like you, are my beloved. I made each as I made you. Listen to me when I speak through them.
You will know my voice by its love.
Is it hard for you to suppose that every person you meet is already in conversation with God? Sometimes it is for me. Less so when I remember God.
That feels deeply personal. Their conversation does not depend on me. It is happening between God and each beloved child with or without my interruption, and probably better without. It’s personal and intimate, whether or not the child yet recognizes God’s voice. I wonder if my role is simply to encourage that conversation by reflecting God’s love onto the beloved, and maybe offering them a quiet place to talk, bringing them pitchers of cool water when they get thirsty and turkey, brie, and apple sandwiches every couple of hours.
I might help by sharing my own conversation if so asked. By sharing my story, and gently. By sharing my story without me in the middle. I know - another paradox.
Still true.
And perhaps, most importantly, being curious about their conversation. Not in a knowing or corrective sort of way. Not in a let me translate for God sort of way. But in a way that lets God be as big as God chooses to be and is open to the idea that God may just speak to each of us in our native tongue, and perhaps hearing God in one’s own language, rather than mine, matters.
Open, even, to the possibility that they might have heard something worthy of sharing with me, and that listening might help them to hear it more clearly. To trust it. If I might believe that they are in conversation with God, and right now, what else is there but to pray for the ears to hear. Theirs and mine.
This is a newish thought for me. Still trying it on, I suppose. But it changes everything, or seems to. I mean, wouldn’t it?
This is a part of my story. God spoke to me long before I recognized His voice; offered grace before I knew grace; put cool cloths on my forehead when I was having fever dreams; waited patiently beside my bed until I woke, and sang me back to sleep until I was ready, truly ready, to wake and to live. God poured out God’s love onto me long before I knew how to recognize love. God did not withhold love until I agreed to receive it. Did not say, not even once:
Chris, Would you just get your theology right already, so I can finally love you?
(I both want to laugh out loud at that sentence…and weep. This is what I once heard, and even believed. I know now it is another’s voice. Not. His. Voice.)
I am certain I would still be waiting if God’s love depended on my getting a passing score on a theology test. It seems preposterously prideful to believe I might ever score high enough to earn that love, or to suggest to another that God is just waiting, even patiently waiting, for them to get their act together before he pours out his love. People talk of cheap grace. That would be the cheapest grace of all, I think. Grace given only after you earn it. Which, of course, is not grace at all.
Today I wonder differently. Even now, I am foggy and there is sleep in my eyes, but I recognize the voice of my beloved when we walk together, and trust that in walking closely with God, He will attend to my theology. If there happens to be a theology test (which I certainly do not believe there will be), God knows what’s on it.
Trust the teacher.
Wind Chime
How many mornings has the wind chime waited for you to hear her part?
You came before the sunrise expecting the geese from the pond, the cardinals, crows, and jays, and songbirds waiting for their naming day. But they demurred,
all of them, allowing the chime to declare the morning to you for the first time. At first she was reluctant, a single mournful note, barely audible above the voices of the fates. You opened your eyes, wondering if you had forgotten to remove your tether
to reality, but it lay undisturbed, unnoticing on the table. The chime silented. Waited patiently for you to close your eyes and return to her. To surrender. And when she saw your leg go still, your breath slow, and your shoulders fall, she sang again.
Quietly at first, but gaining confidence, and adding volume and vibrato with each lingering note. You often heard her voice before you felt any breeze, and you wondered at this until you let even this wonder pass, and you fell into her world and
rode her wavy notes to some distant country. To Life, perhaps. Where the song of Orpheus was sung for the first time. In Time the others, eyes fixed on the director, added their voices to the dawn hymn: Cardinal, Jay, Holy Geese. Fearlessly
but from a respectable distance, and never eclipsing her glory melody. Not even the ravens and wrens, and you know how ravens and wrens can be. As the sun lit the eastern sky, she went silent and you were both lost and not lost. Last thought: To what or whom have you surrendered in love? Merton, and many others suggest that sometimes the most loving and most difficult thing we can do is surrender to being loved.
Selfless love consents to be loved selflessly for the sake of the beloved. In so doing, it perfects itself. The gift of love is the gift of the power and the capacity to love, and, therefore, to give love with full effect is also to receive it. So, love can only be kept by being given away, and it can only be given perfectly when it is also received.
In my words, I wonder if how I might be if I believed that God delights in my delight of His love. Ask yourself, Is there anything better than knowing your lover cherishes the way in which you love him or her? Suppose that is the key in which the great song is written.
To whose love will you surrender and fully?
Oremus,
Chris
Lovely reflection this week, Chris. Thank you.