I came across this recently...
more to follow when i get a moment...
from When the Heart Waits by Sue Monk Kidd...
"We try and try to let go, only to find ourselves clinging again. So what do we do? We begin by recognizing the reality of our (clinging), the naturalness as well as the power of it.
Then we enter the relinquishment process. Thomas Kelley wrote, “The will must be subjected bit by bit, piecemeal and progressively, to the divine Will.”
Kelley spoke of four steps in the process of self-abandonment, first, pry open your eyes to the “flaming vision of the wonder of such a life.” Second, begin where you are and begin now. Third, if you stumble and “assert your old proud self” (and you will), don’t waste a lot of time with regret and self-accusation. Just begin again. These three steps involve self-initiatives, things we’re more or less able to control ourselves.
The fourth step, however, moves in a completely different direction: “Don’t grit your teeth and clench your fists and say, ‘I will! I will!’ Relax. Take your hands off. Submit yourselves to God…Let life be willed through you.”
I read the passage several times. Relax? Take hands off? Submit the process to God? And pray tell, what does it mean to “let life be willed through you”? Was there a shift in the process of letting go from the active to the passive?
This all intrigued me a great deal. Exploring further, I found that Thomas Merton suggested that there are two levels to the process of abandoning self-will and surrendering fully to God. First, there is the active work we do with the conscious, surface attachments in our life—those patterns we recognize and can campaign against. He wrote that to let go of these “you pray and suffer and hang on and give things up and hope and sweat.” This seemed to correspond to Kelley’s first three steps. At this level we approach letting go the active way, through self-initiatives, will, and work. We begin and begin again. By our own sweat and effort we work to let go of attachments that are mainly on the surface.
The second level deals with deeper, more unconscious patterns—what Merton called our “secret attachments.” To uproot these he cautioned that “we need to leave the initiative in the hands of God working in our souls either directly in the night of aridity and suffering, or through events and other men.”
Merton suggested that on this level we shift to a different way of letting go—one that has a curious similarity to Kelley’s fourth step. Here the approach becomes mysterious. We let go of our letting go. We stop struggling, stop saying, “I will let go, I will. I will.” Instead, having done all we can, we allow God to work directly on the more secret and deeply ingrained attachment we have to self. We allow God to release us through the experiences, encounters, and events that come to us.
It suddenly made sense to me why our letting go so often fails. We remain at the first level. As Merton wrote,
This is where so many holy people break down…As soon as they reach the point where they can no longer see the way and guide themselves by their own light, they refuse to go any further…It is in this darkness that we find true liberty. It is in this abandonment that we are made strong.
This is the night that empties us. "
From Sue Monk Kidd When The Heart Waits pgs 105-107
Then we enter the relinquishment process. Thomas Kelley wrote, “The will must be subjected bit by bit, piecemeal and progressively, to the divine Will.”
Kelley spoke of four steps in the process of self-abandonment, first, pry open your eyes to the “flaming vision of the wonder of such a life.” Second, begin where you are and begin now. Third, if you stumble and “assert your old proud self” (and you will), don’t waste a lot of time with regret and self-accusation. Just begin again. These three steps involve self-initiatives, things we’re more or less able to control ourselves.
The fourth step, however, moves in a completely different direction: “Don’t grit your teeth and clench your fists and say, ‘I will! I will!’ Relax. Take your hands off. Submit yourselves to God…Let life be willed through you.”
I read the passage several times. Relax? Take hands off? Submit the process to God? And pray tell, what does it mean to “let life be willed through you”? Was there a shift in the process of letting go from the active to the passive?
This all intrigued me a great deal. Exploring further, I found that Thomas Merton suggested that there are two levels to the process of abandoning self-will and surrendering fully to God. First, there is the active work we do with the conscious, surface attachments in our life—those patterns we recognize and can campaign against. He wrote that to let go of these “you pray and suffer and hang on and give things up and hope and sweat.” This seemed to correspond to Kelley’s first three steps. At this level we approach letting go the active way, through self-initiatives, will, and work. We begin and begin again. By our own sweat and effort we work to let go of attachments that are mainly on the surface.
The second level deals with deeper, more unconscious patterns—what Merton called our “secret attachments.” To uproot these he cautioned that “we need to leave the initiative in the hands of God working in our souls either directly in the night of aridity and suffering, or through events and other men.”
Merton suggested that on this level we shift to a different way of letting go—one that has a curious similarity to Kelley’s fourth step. Here the approach becomes mysterious. We let go of our letting go. We stop struggling, stop saying, “I will let go, I will. I will.” Instead, having done all we can, we allow God to work directly on the more secret and deeply ingrained attachment we have to self. We allow God to release us through the experiences, encounters, and events that come to us.
It suddenly made sense to me why our letting go so often fails. We remain at the first level. As Merton wrote,
This is where so many holy people break down…As soon as they reach the point where they can no longer see the way and guide themselves by their own light, they refuse to go any further…It is in this darkness that we find true liberty. It is in this abandonment that we are made strong.
This is the night that empties us. "
From Sue Monk Kidd When The Heart Waits pgs 105-107
No comments:
Post a Comment