The Divine Romance

Surrender cannot be self-annihilation, but the fulfillment of our truest selves.

Barnaby Furnas - Untitled (Flood)

Dear Friend,

I’m all but certain we have talked about my dear French friend, “L’Appelle du Vide.” He tends to be one of those scary-awkward late arrivals around whom guests start to fidget when he mercifully-rarely shows up at a holiday party. He is usually dressed all wrong - never even a stitch of red, and says things that people don’t know quite how to respond to. Things like, “j’ever think about just stepping off?” and generally only shaves every couple of days. Given all of that, they probably should get (at least) a little fidgety - not because they do not understand him, but because they might understand him almost intuitively and immediately. Which can be unsettling. Of course it can be unsettling to meet him and to recognize yourself in his eyes, if only a little and only if you let your eyes linger on his too long.

But he’s a strange, and maybe even a wondrous guest, and I wonder if he’s not worth paying more attention to - rather than simply dismissing him as the unsettling, crazy friend of some great thinkers who may (or may not) have tried to kick God to the side of the road in a few miles back and then fell into the ditch of despair when they dared to consider they might have succeeded in the attempt.

---

This week, one of the Saints left a copy of Faith, Hope and Carnage on my desk. Seemed an odd choice, but as I mentioned last time, I’m staying open to their suggestions, and I’ve been reading it on the mid-watch and most any time I’m not walking or resting. Turns out, The epitaph is simple:

And a little child shall lead them.

Isaiah 11:6

Not such an odd choice at Advent, after all. Nice.

---

Among the myriad things that stuck out to me was this:

…suffering is, by its nature the primary mechanism of change, and that it somehow presents us with the opportunity to transform into something else, something different, hopefully something better. That God bestows us these terrible devastating opportunities that bring amelioration and transformation. This change is not something we necessarily seek out; rather, change is often brought to bear upon us, through a shattering or annihilation of our former selves.

- Nick Cave

When I first read this, I bristled at the suggestion that God would bestow us with circumstances that might shatter or annihilate us. And yet, I cannot pretend that this is a completely new idea to me. Merton, and so many have of my people, have spoken about the idea that annihilation of the false self is the very thing that offers the fullness of life, but the idea of annihilation is so profoundly violent that I can’t square it with the God to whom I have given my heart. I have even heard it suggested that Jesus was walking this line when he said,

If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it.

- Jesus of Nazareth

This morning, something switched and switched completely (and maybe-hopefully finally.) Someone whispered to me that God would never, ever, ever, ever take our lives from us - by force - in order to save us. The choice is the gift he has offered to us alone. A choice he will honor.

There are terrible abusive words for failing refusing to honor a beloved’s choice, and yet, I have heard this very suggestion most of my adult religious life. People have explicitly stated that these profoundly disruptive circumstances are often “just God trying to get our attention,” as if he’d rather hold our shattered souls in his arms than be denied our adoration.

I cannot believe this. Not that I do not. I cannot.

God, I believe is far more subtle than that. He seduces us with pine needles and blue birds and white egrets and mysteries so generous that they are often easy to mistake for commonplace things. Because they are: Common Miracles. Everywhere we look when we move slowly enough to pay attention.

---

The invitation is to self-surrender to Him and his extravagant love offer, and perhaps the annihilation is not what God would do to us but what we do to ourselves when we refuse the invitation. I wonder if annihilation takes the form of chronic self-mutilation and self-transformation, or turning ourselves into something we were never meant to be at all. Striving. Grasping. Self-sufficient. Self-righteous (especially self-righteousness. Driven. Until we no longer even recognize ourselves as we were made and we lose confidence in Him who considers us - and has always considered us - His very own to love lavishly. We transform ourselves into grotesque creatures that refuse to be loved as we are, which, I am convinced, is precisely how we were meant to be loved. As we are, and not as we might be (if only we just try a little harder still. Loved as we were formed by God. When we refuse to allow His formation we, take the potter’s wheel ourselves, become the agents of our own annihilations. Perhaps?

Then annihilation is no longer too violent a word, but perhaps even an insufficiently violent one.

---

But an invitation to self-surrender is something completely different, isn’t it? It contains not even a whiff of coercion or fear or even the scent of shame. It’s pure Love. It’s the most lavish romance story ever written. The romance story from which every romance story flows. The source of all romance stories. How could it be otherwise?

In another part of the book, Cave says:

“Any true love song must be a song for God.”

Nick Cave

Kathryn has heard this so many times from me that I was thunderstruck to hear someone else say it out loud. Yes:

Any.

True.

Love.

Song.

Must be.

A Song.

For.

God.

How it could be otherwise?

---

And of all the love songs I know, this one may be the truest. Imagine God singing it into you at your forming, and at every waking since. The invitation to reject self-annihilation - once and for all - and to a surrender to extraordinarily extravagance of our divine maker’s boundless love. If you listen closely, you might hear this song all around you today. I hope you may. I hope it for you and for all of us.

You fill up my senses, like a night in a (windy) forest
Like the mountains in springtime, like a walk in the rain
Like a storm in the desert, like a sleepy blue ocean
You fill up my senses, come fill me again

Come let me love you, let me give my life to you
Let me drown in your laughter, …
… Let me lay down beside you, let me always be with you
Come let me love you, come love me again

Let me give my life to you
Come let me love you, come love me again.

John Denver

As for my dear friend, l’Appelle. Maybe he is a little awkward in his delivery, but maybe he has been talking about this longing to surrender all along, which seems to be far more holy than I would have imagined if all I did was pay attention to his bad shave and inappropriate clothes.

Oremus,

Ć

---

Holy Maker,

You whispered your image into my very being.

And still I embrace the lies that You have misshapen me,

When it has been me all along who has marred your marvelous craftsmanship.

Enough!

I give myself to you alone.

Not so that I may live better or well or even righteously, but so that you may fill up my senses.

Amen.