Surrender

(This is part 2 in a series on Joan Chittister’s book on the Rule of St. Benedict.)

“The word humility has an odious tone in a world where the attention on ‘I’ is so much more central than the value of ‘we.’” Joan Chittister, Radical Spirit

I once counseled a woman who was experiencing a lot of personal distress, almost all of it self-inflicted. She was hell-bent on following her own destructive path no matter the cost to her or to her loved ones. When she asked me what she should do, I told her that she needed to surrender her worries and plans to God. She replied that she was an American and “Americans don’t surrender.” She continued to follow her own path and ended up losing everything that mattered to her, including her life.

Giving up our own will and surrendering to God’s may be the most difficult thing we ever do. It strikes at the very heart of the human ego. If the story of Adam and Eve teaches us nothing else, it is that we want our own way. We want to be independent and we want to be in charge. At least I do.

So it isn’t surprising that I was wary of approaching the second step in St. Benedict’s chapter on humility, because it deals with surrendering your will in favor of God’s.

“I’m Chevy Chase and you’re not.”  Chevy Chase on SNL

Our journey into the meaning of humility begins with the recognition that we’re not God. The 10 Commandments begin in the same way. Realizing that we are not, in fact, God puts everything else into proper perspective. It also creates a problem: if God is God and we’re not then it follows that God’s plans are probably better than ours. But we like our plans. Even when they don’t work out, we like to think we’re in charge of our lives.

However, Benedict is blunt, writing that we are to “love not our own will nor take pleasure in the satisfaction of our desires…that we shall imitate by our actions that saying of Christ’s: ‘I have come not to do my own will, but the will of the One who sent me.’” (John 6:38)

That’s challenging, especially if we look at it in political terms. My grandmother always said that people voted their ‘pocketbook,’ meaning they voted for things that were in their own personal (usually economic) interests. But, putting God’s will ahead of ours may mean that we vote against our personal interests in favor of the common good. As I said, challenging.

And what exactly is God’s will? It’s not a big mystery. The Bible is pretty explicit: to love God, to love justice, protect the powerless and marginalized, feed the hungry, house the homeless, welcome the alien, and above all to show the love of God to everyone.

Joan Chittister writes that “it is a straight line from the mind of God to the needs of the world.”

As I write this post today my father-in-law is coming down to his last few hours of life. He has waged a heroic battle against Parkinson’s, but the battle is coming to an end. The question in situations like this is always what to pray for. Comfort, of course, for him and for our family. But, what else? Should I pray for a miraculous healing? A quick death? After a certain amount of struggle I’ve decided that the best thing to pray for is simply that God’s will be done. It sounds like a cliché, but a miracle, etc. may not be part of God’s plan. The wonderful thing about praying for God’s will to be done is that it takes the guesswork and uncertainty out of it. Most importantly, it takes my desire for control out of it. And in the end that brings a true sense of calmness and peace.

Try putting your life in God’s hands this week. Try praying for God’s will to be done. Try to see the world through God’s eyes. What needs can we meet? Who can we help? How can we be instruments of God’s love? Of God’s peace?

The answers are there if we just surrender.

God bless you. Stay well.