Holy Thursday
Surrender is the discovery that we are in a river of love and that we float without having to do anything. —David Benner, Surrender to Love
Father Richard Rohr considers how surrender is simply accepting the reality that we are not in control:
If we cannot control life and death, why do we spend so much time trying to control smaller outcomes? Call it destiny, providence, guidance, synchronicity, or coincidence, but people who are connected to the Source do not need to steer their own life and agenda. They know that it is being done for them in a much better way than they ever could. Those who hand themselves over are received, and the flow happens through them. Those who don’t relinquish control are still received, but they significantly slow down the natural flow of Spirit.
When we set ourselves up to think we deserve, expect, or need certain things to happen, we are setting ourselves up for constant unhappiness and a final inability to enjoy or at least allow what is going to happen anyway. After a while, we find ourselves resisting almost everything at some level. It is a terrible way to live. Giving up control is a school to learn union, compassion, and understanding. It is ultimately a school for the final letting go that we call death. Right now, as we face social uncertainty, economic fragility, and the vulnerability of our own bodies, is there something deeper that we can surrender to, that can ground us in disruption?
Surrendering to the divine flow is not about giving in, capitulating, becoming a puppet, being naïve, being irresponsible, or stopping all planning and thinking. Surrender is about a peaceful inner opening that keeps the conduit of living water flowing to love. [1]
I am confident in this: every time we surrender to love, we have also just chosen to die. Every time we let love orient us, we are letting go of ourselves as an autonomous unit and have given a bit of ourselves away to something or someone else, and it is not easily retrieved—unless we choose to stop loving—which many do. But even then, when that expanded self wants to retreat back into itself, it realizes it is trapped in a much larger truth now. And love wins again. [2]
Jesus surely had a dozen good reasons why he should not have had to die so young, so unsuccessful at that point, and the Son of God besides! By becoming the Passover Lamb, plus the foot-washing servant, Jesus makes God’s love human, personal, clear, and quite concrete. Jesus is handed over to the religious and political powers-that-be, and we must be handed over to God from our power, privilege, and need for control. Otherwise, we will never grow up or participate in the mystery of God and love. It really is about “passing over” to a deeper faith and life. [3]
References:
[1] Adapted from Richard Rohr, Adam’s Return: The Five Promises of Male Initiation (Crossroad, 2004), 162–163.
[2] Adapted from Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self (Jossey-Bass, 2013), 65.
[3] Adapted from Richard Rohr, Wondrous Encounters: Scripture for Lent (St. Anthony Messenger Press, 2011), 134–135.
Image credit and inspiration: Unknown, Neom (detail), 2023, photo, Saudi Arabia, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. Like this cave explorer, loving surrender can sometimes mean walking bravely into a dark unknown.
Story from Our Community:
Almost ten years ago, my beloved mother passed away. Through grieving her illness and passing, I learned the value of tears. One of my Mom’s precious nurses called my tears “love drops.” The place of surrender I could access through allowing the tears to flow was a state of pure and complete Love.
—Kay L.
