Practicing Surrender: Entering the Flow of Abundance

Late last year I began taking a daily walk through what we still call the Young Forest (planted with ten-inch pencil-thin seedlings 20 years old, now reaching toward the sky at 70 plus feet). It takes less than five minutes to walk unless I linger, which I sometimes do. I slip out of my garden shoes and make my way barefoot.

Silly, I suppose, this hankering to connect to God and pray in this way. But it feels like an invitation into something unexpected--both uncomfortable and glorious--and I'm curious what I might experience and hear from God as I come in my tender-footed frailty, whispering prayers along the way. Tender-footed or not (and less so as the weeks unfold), it seems a simple grounding practice to adopt when the world atop of this good earth feels ripply and uncertain.

Of late, I wonder what is mine to do in uncertain times. Into what faithful action am I being invited to participate? Sometimes the way seems clear, and other times not so much. I wonder if Abraham, when following God into the desert with Isaac to make a sacrifice became increasingly troubled by the lack of one, something Isaac at least expressed. Abraham had chosen to trust God, to walk in faithfulness to the present moment, to surrender to and rely on God. He walked, I imagine, trusting in a God of abundance, and not letting fear of scarcity send him down a different path.

I was reminded of an old book that shaped me more than 20 years ago, The Sacrament of the Present Moment.[1] I found my little copy tucked into my great-grandfather's wood and glass bookshelf, and spent a morning revisiting it.

Caussade, like so many contemplatives before and after him, reminds us to begin simply with trusting God's abundant outpouring of grace in the universe, a love which pervades all things. The "secret" to living in the present moment is simply allowing ourselves to be borne along the tide of God's outpouring grace. What this looks like, Caussade says, is attending to the task of the present moment with simple, faithful obedience. Just now it is adding wood to the fire. Now it is standing watch in front of a building where a group has gathered to study English as a second language. And now it is to hold the hand of friend who is grieving, bearing witness to her loss.

Sometimes what is in front of me interrupts my well-laid plans. It's the unexpected phone call asking if I can help with this or that. It is the car that breaks down on the way to Someplace Important, the lost dog that wanders into the yard and wants to be found. If I am willing to see them as such, these interruptions are invitations into a sacred encounter with God, as all moments are.

Even if tending to the present moment is refreshingly simple, I find it frustratingly hard to put into practice. Maybe I want something that requires special education, skills or gifts, rather than merely a willingness to turn toward--to surrender to--whatever is before me in this moment. Especially when that means turning away from what I had planned. I find it challenging to turn away from the plan I've made for the day to tend to something else. Maybe I assume sticking to my plan will help keep me safe from that which is uncertain and ripply in the world because it represents control. Maybe I'm living from a posture of scarcity so controlling my minutes and dollars and possessions assures I'll have enough.

Even if I believe that whatever I'm asked to relinquish in the moment pales in comparison to the abundance I fall into (assuming surrendering means I will be borne along in the flow of God's prodigious love and able to be a conduit of that love), still, surrendering to the present moment takes an intention I need to practice. And daily. So I wondered, today, if coming barefoot to the woods is perhaps a primal invitation to practice surrendering. To fall into foolishness, as it were, trusting I'll be caught and held as I attend to a deeply-earthy satisfying moment (albeit uncomfortably cold sometimes). My need for control and comfort are relinquished for a few moments as I take off my shoes and make my way into the woods.

Just now I'm soaking up warmth from the earth while standing at the far edge of the woods looking out at the winter sky, my feet grounded in wild geranium that grows year round. I sense a certainty that God's invitation to surrender comes nestled in abundance.

And prayers are whispered and gratitudes spoken.

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[1] Written by 17th century Jesuit priest, Jean-Pierre de Caussade.