March 29, 7:00pm (Kevin Westling)
Surrender is one of the answers I have with me in the dark, a strong mast to which I can lash myself in a storm. It is no easy answer however. I resist it tooth and nail every time. There has not been one time in my life when the concept of surrender occurred to me early on in a difficult struggle.
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“The answer is...surrender”
Trinity @ 7 on March 28, 2010
by Cam Miller
We had a dinner here on Wednesday evening,
and in reference to a conversation that
someone wants to have with me at some point,
they assured me that they knew
I don’t have all the answers.
I made a smart-ass comment that, in fact,
I only have three answers,
so I hoped the question we would be discussing
matched one of my three answers.
The next day
as I enjoyed the steam room at the JCC all to myself,
I began to wonder if I have any answers at all,
and if I do,
what are they.
At an earlier time in my life,
I might have sat there cataloguing all the answers I held
in my metaphorical bag of tricks.
It would have been a bag bulging with answers.
Later, as the weight and proportions of the bag
began to dwindle,
I might have felt a parallel sense of increasing anxiety.
Now, however, I had to think long and hard
in search of something I possess
that feels anything like an answer –
one of those solid pillars you can hold onto in the dark,
and that keeps you anchored
when you are savagely buffeted by the storms of life.
I won’t tell you how many answers I found
as I lumbered around the wreckage
of old answers since gone bad,
but I will tell you that there is an expansive graveyard
in there.
But here is one of those moorings that has grown
deeper and steadier and more available over time
instead of shrinking, dissolving or disappearing altogether
as answers have a habit of doing.
It is a touchstone or mooring in every religion that I know about, those with or without a God at their center.
It is the idea of surrender.
In the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition
it goes back to the story of Abraham’s willingness
to leave everything he knew
and strike out in a direction that God told him to,
all on the promise of an unknown god.
Later it was the insanely radical surrender
of being willing to offer his only child as a sacrifice
because God told him to,
even though in the end God did not require it.
Later Judaism picks up on that theme with the figure of Moses.
Christianity does the same with Jesus.
Islam echoes radical obedience with Mohammad.
Even Buddhism, which has no natural place for a god,
at least in the philosophical traditions that gave birth
to the more pop-culture varieties,
surrender plays a huge role.
It is surrender of the mind.
It is surrender of illusions.
It is surrender of the Self to mindfulness.
In the 12-steps of Alcoholics Anonymous,
based on St. Ignatius’ “Spiritual Exercises,”
it is surrendering ones will to a “power greater than the self.”
Surrender is one of the answers I have with me in the dark,
a strong mast to which I can lash myself in a storm.
It is no easy answer however.
I resist it tooth and nail every time.
There has not been one time in my life
when the concept of surrender
occurred to me early on in a difficult struggle.
There has not been once
that I happily grabbed hold of it as the answer of choice.
It stinks really.
I think it is a lousy system
and if I were god, that certainly is not the way
I would have designed it.
Anyway, if you happen to be unfamiliar with surrender,
let me try to color in the outlines a little bit.
Surrender is indicated when we have hit a limit
that our health
or hope or peace must penetrate
if all is to be well, and all manner of thing is to be well.
When there is a fear or anxiety we can’t get through;
When there is a grief we cannot exit;
When there is an obsession or compulsion or habit we cannot will ourselves away from;
When there is a problem that we cannot solve,
or the pieces of a puzzle we cannot fit together;
When a relationship simply can no longer find its balance
or reconciliation or health;
When our sense of vocation or purpose or meaning is lost,
and cynicism is darkly attractive while hope seems impossibly exotic…
Surrender is indicated.
What that means is,
that it is time to fall backwards into the arms of…
God?
A power greater than ourselves?
An unknown mystery?
Into the absolute presence of the moment?
Even simply into the unknown.
When we have tried everything we know how to do
and nothing has worked;
and when we are in fact trying things over and over again
that didn’t work the first or second or third time
we tried them;
it is time to acknowledge our powerlessness
and entrust ourselves to the next thing that is not our thing.
Giving up,
letting go
and opening up to see and hear and learn,
either allows or makes things happen.
Some people say that when we surrender
we make room for God to act.
Some people say that when we surrender
we allow ourselves to see things we couldn’t see before.
Some people say that when we surrender
we change the circumstance just enough that new possibilities sprout through the cracks.
Some people say that when we surrender
we make ourselves available to serendipity.
I say maybe it is all of the above,
but I do know,
from my own experiences
and the privilege of standing with others in theirs,
that God is present in our midst at all times;
and that surrender seems to allow us
to perceive
what just moments before, we were blind to.
So, in a nutshell,
what I know is that at the very moment our instinct
would have us flail around
in the effort to exert our will over the chaos
and wounds that touch and endanger us,
surrender is the better option.
It is counter-intuitive,
quite difficult and even painful to achieve,
yet profoundly effective
in creating new possibilities
where once there seemed to be no options and no hope.
So there is an answer, such as it is,
that I am actually putting forth into the world
as if it could fly on its own and survive out there in the wild.
Tonight, as we light candles,
perhaps there is a little surrender that has been waiting for you.
If so, I invite you to grant it the power to take your will,
and to light a candle in thanksgiving for it,
even if you don’t feel grateful…yet.
