Surrender

Powerlessness is not a modern virtue.  The people of our age—that is , we, are not easily obsequious, no matter who we are.  We take classlessness seriously; much as it does not really exist.  We are persons with some kind of power, we insist, however fanciful, however much a myth.  We seriously think we have rights and voice and place.  It’s a strange contradiction.  In this world of megacorporations and global networks and nuclear threat and invisible international links, the individual has never been so assertive—and never been so powerless.

Life is, for the most part, out of our control.  We boast about democratic participation and watch votes discarded in national elections at the whim and fancy of a few.  We glory in the impregnability of our national defense system and watch the economic center of the country go down in two minutes under the blow of two commercial airliners, our own, while we stand helplessly by.  We see rivers clog up and air go gray and land go to dust around us and there’s not a thing we can do about it. Then we turn on our television sets and realize that someone, in the name of justice and on our behalf, is now raining down another kind of terror on innocent people half a world away.

Then only surrender is possible.  But not the kind of surrender that gives over conscience and humanity to the inhumanity of others.  We must now surrender to the obligation to understand and to care.  We must surrender ourselves to becoming conscious, thinking members of the human race.  We must put down the temptation to powerlessness and surrender to the questions of the moment.

It is not a matter of changing what cannot be changed.  It is a matter of refusing to allow what ought to be changed to conform us to itself.  Perhaps there is nothing we can do but surrender ourselves to pursuing the question of why it is that now in this great and glorious world nothing can be done for those whose lives are dismally inglorious.  That alone would be an act of hope to many and a spark of hope in my own soul.  It would tell me that I am still alive, that my soul at least has not died at the hands of the culture of death around me.

                        Sr. Joan D. Chittister  Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope

There are two pieces of wisdom that I carry close to my heart:  the first is from Mary Pickford, who said, “If you have made mistakes…there is always another chance for you….You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing we call failure is not the falling down but the staying down.”  The second insight is from First Lady Martha Washington, who said, “The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances.”

                   Joan Chittister in Twelve Steps to Inner Freedom: Humility Revisited

Humility is what gives us the vision to look upon our world with fresh eyes.  Humility enables us to respect others enough to put down our spurious images of ourselves and open our arms, as individuals and as a nation.  An awareness of limitations and a consciousness of the glory and goodness of God in others can make us while.  A consciousness of the brokenness of others that comes out of the consciousness of our own unrehabilitated selves can make us tender, make us holy…..If we really want to stop the violence in this country, we must start admiring others more for the goodness we see in them.  We must admire ourselves less, perhaps, in view of the struggle that we know is even now at war in us.  Even now it threatens to take our real measure.  The day we admit that, humility comes and caning ends.  Violence ends.  Oppression ends.  Everywhere.  Because first it ended in us.

Prayer is an attitude toward life that sees everything as ultimately sacred, everything as potentially life-changing, everything as revelatory of life’s meaning. It is our link between dailiness and eternity.

            Joan Chittister

We do not pray prayers to coax God to save us from ourselves.  The fights we start we are more than capable of ending. The weapons we make we ourselves can destroy. The jobs we get or lose we can learn from. No, we do not pray to change God.  We pray so that God can change us. Those who pray prepare for the in-breaking of God in their lives.

Adoration, one of the purposes of prayer, comes at that moment in time when we recognize the beauty of life, the graces of our own life—whatever its difficulties—the awesomeness of the universe, and the certainty that underneath it all lies a mystery beyond us. True, everything in this world is not right.  Some people live in relentless poverty, embarrassing tragedy, inhuman injustice. But in the center of us, we know it was not meant to be that way. And for that we can, whatever the present situation, sing Alleluia.

The Talmud reads, “Never pray in a room without windows.” Never pray without the world in mind, in other words. The purpose of the spiritual life is not to save us from reality. It is to enable us to go on co-creating it.

Joan Chittister

Until we have faced the controversies of life, explained our own position on them, and, at the same time, been open to the opinions, information, and attitudes of others, we have not really joined the human race. We have only been observers of the struggle rather than participants in the human quest for truth.

            Joan Chittister

Each of us has a personal agenda—the thing we most want to do in life: feed the hungry, rescue the children, rebuild the city, reduce world conflict, eliminate nuclear weapons, achieve universal human rights for everyone—whatever their color, whatever their sexual orientation, whatever their gender. But when we let one good thing obliterate the others we are simply doing what has always been done: We are making a one-eyed world and calling it good.

Endurance is not a virtue when it tolerates evil. “If we had been holier people,” Templeton wrote, “we would have been angrier oftener.” Which translated means: Never endure what is not in itself essentially good, or designed to make everybody’s world a better place, or, in the end, really good for your own development. To violate any of those things is to violate the will of God for creation. God, scripture shows us, expects us to take a stand.

                        Joan Chittister

“The best way out is always through,” Robert Frost wrote. It’s what we go through in life and finally best—or at least discover that it did not best us—that gives us quality, depth, and the ability to try again.

            Joan Chittister

“The difference between perseverance and obstinancy,” Harriet Beecher Stow wrote, “is that one comes from a strong will and the other one comes from a strong won’t.” Perseverance saves because it enables us to try everything until something works. Obstinancy destroys us because it refuses to imagine any way of doing a thing but ours. One opens us to the world; the other closes us off. Which approach is most like yours?

            Joan Chittister

Forgiveness occurs when we don’t need to hold a grudge anymore, when we are strong enough to be independent of whatever, whoever it was that so ruthlessly uncovered the need in us. Forgiveness is not the problem; it’s living till it comes that taxes all the strength we have.

The anger, the hurt, the bitterness that we carry from the past does little or nothing to harm the one who harmed us. It harms only ourselves. It is acid poured on our own souls, eating away at the peace in us.

Forgiveness is the gift that says two things: First, I am just as weak as everyone else in the human race, and I know it. And second, my inner life is too rich to be destroyed by anything outside of it.

Forgiveness and reconciliation are not the same thing. One enables us to move beyond the past. The other restores a relationship. The relationship is seldom as important as the restoration of inner peace that comes with recognizing that the past is past.

            Joan Chittister

The function of disillusionment is to make us reevaluate what is really worth pursuing in life. Disillusionment is a very important thing. Until we find ourselves disillusioned, we are far too inclined to worship what is not God.

Joan Chittister

The kinds of dreams we have determine the quality of our lives. The problem is not that we don’t dream. The problem is that we seldom dream high enough.

Show me a dreamer and I’ll show you one of God’s heartbeats for the human race.

There’s a great difference between a plan and a dream. A plan specifies the steps we’re supposed to take to get where we already know we’re going. A dream charts a direction to a place we are willing to make exist.

                        Joan Chittister

This year when you open a gift at Christmastime, when you say “thank you,” remember that this particular gift is only meant to be a reminder of the goodness of God calling you to be the voice crying in the wilderness that gives passionate thanks for everything, for everyone, in life.

            Joan Chittister

When a sense of zeal leaves our life, it is time to begin again, because whatever we have been doing up to now has clearly died in us.

            Joan Chittister

To be able to be exuberant about something is one of life’s greatest gifts. Never take it for granted. Nurture it. Give in to it at all times, no matter who goes “tsk, tsk” behind you. Exuberance may be the only proof we have that we are really alive.

Exuberance is infectious. What excites you will eventually excite the rest of the world. We are all simply a microcosm of the world. Whatever you and I want we must ourselves become or how can it ever become real anywhere else?

Joan Chittister

Bethlehem and the manger were foolish. Nazareth and the carpentry were foolish. Galilee and the lepers were foolish. But the energy of them marked the world, gave it new vision, raised its hope. If we live without being foolish about something great we can, of course, live very comfortably. The question is, “Will we have lived well?”

            Joan Chittister

The wag put it this way: “We are all in the same boat with Christopher Columbus. He didn’t know where he was going when he started. When he got there he didn’t know where he was. And when he got back he didn’t know where he’d been.” So enjoy. Wherever you are, whatever is going on in your life right now is the birthing place of God for you. Say thank you.

            Joan Chittister

It is so easy to criticize people for not being good enough when we have no idea how bad they could be if they weren’t as good as they are.

            Joan Chittister

Everything we do in life, the scripture reminds us, goes into the treasury of the heart. The ideas with which we fill our hearts determine the way we live our lives. Those are the things we draw on in those moments when we need to reach down deep inside ourselves for character, courage, endurance, and hope. That’s why what we read, what we see, and what we do from day to day counts so much in life.

Joan Chittister

Reflecting on the moral quality of goodness,

“Goodness carries us through the hard moments of life and brings us out better on the other side. It is patience when we have reason to be frustrated, generosity when we qualify to be frugal, the public commitment to truth when not a soul in the world would be expecting us to speak out.”

Joan Chittister

More reflections on goodness…

“No one can be good for long,” Bertolt Brecht wrote, “if goodness is not in demand.” What we expect in a society is what we will get. Very few people can live beyond the standards of the society in which they exist. Those who do are saints, those who don’t are normal.

Lots of things seem to be goodness that are simply political choices. It’s when we do what must be done despite the fact that people either won’t understand or won’t approve that the grain of goodness grows to fullness in us. Don’t be discouraged. It is often a lifetime in coming.

Joan Chittister

“Rabbi,” the disciples said, “why do you teach that God is closer to sinners than to the perfect ones?” “Well,” the old rabbi explained, “every time we sin, we break the thread that ties us to God. Every time we repent, God ties it up again. And every knot shortens the thread.” Now isn’t that a lovely thought? It is the weakness of the soul that brings us always closer to God, not its perfectionism.

            Joan Chittister

For prayer to bring strength when we need it, we must pray regularly, even when we think we don’t need it at all. Prayer is a habit of life that leads us to reflection, to the consciousness of God, to the hope that is the lighthouse of the soul guiding us always through all the dark places of life.

Prayer is not a magic act; it is a relationship that calls the spiritual dimension in us to life, that attunes us to the universe, that hears the sound of the great “I Am” everywhere.

            Joan Chittister

I have lived to thank God that all my prayers have not been answered,” Jean Ingelow wrote. I am completely convinced, having lived through it so often in my own life, that when what we want most we do not get, we have not been deprived; we have been saved so that we could create the life we are really mean to have.

            Joan Chittister

Survival is a by-product of trust. When we flail our way through life, the effort of it gets to be too much for us. It’s learning to rest in the arms of the Creator that takes us through what could otherwise have destroyed us.

Vulnerability, the willingness to be taken out into the deserts of life, is not weakness. It is the ultimate in the virtue of hope.

            Joan Chittister

I thought these two made an interesting pairing:

It isn’t failure that destroys us. It’s being afraid to fail that makes the next step in life impossible. But the willingness to fail and fail and fail again is what, in the end, leads to success. It’s called “practice.”

            Joan Chittister

Catherine of Siena taught “Nothing great was ever done without much enduring.”  The trouble is that we are inclined to quit a thing too quickly. We quit when people tell us we’ll never make it. We quit when we get tired. We quit when people don’t approve. These criteria slow a lot of human progress. Worse than that, factors such as these limit our own development.

            Joan Chittister

            Forgiveness is the gift that says two things: First, I am just as weak as everyone else in the human race and I know it. And second, my inner life is too rich to be destroyed by anything outside of it.

            Forgiveness and reconciliation are not the same thing. One enables us to move beyond the past. The other restores a relationship. The relationship is seldom as important as the restoration of inner peace that comes with recognizing that the past is past.

            We know that we have forgiven someone when we can meet that person with genuine acceptance in our hearts, wiser and warier than ever before, not of that person but of our own past expectations of  the relationship.

            Joan Chittiser

There’s a difference between a plan and a dream. A plan specifies the steps we’re supposed to take to get where we already know we are going. A dream charts a direction to a place we are willing to make exist.

Joan Chittister

People who are really interested in raising the level of calm in a discussion and slowing the pace of the world start by lowering the level of their voices and slowing the speed of their talk.

Dear God, creator of women in your image,
Born of a woman in the midst of a world half women
Carried by women to mission fields around the globe,
Made known by women to all the children of the earth,
            Give to the women of our time
               The strength to persevere,

                The courage to speak out,
            The faith to believe in you beyond
                All systems and institutions
So that your face on earth may be seen in all its beauty
            So that men and women become whole,
So that the church may be converted to your will in everything and in all ways.
            We call on the holy women, who went before us,
            Channels of Your word in testaments Old and New,
                        To intercede for us
            So that we might be given the grace
            To become what they have been
            For the honor and glory of God.

            Joan Chittister

Winter is a lesson about the fine art of loss and growth.
Its lesson is clear; There is only one way out of struggle
 and that is by going into its darkness,
 waiting for the light; and being open to new growth.

Joan Chittister

Vision

People of vision
    work at the spiritual life,
   expecting no gifts from it
 and seeking no mystical signs
 to mark their spiritual growth.
They simply do what must be done: 
   they immerse themselves
in the presence of God
until everything becomes for them
the presence of God.

            Joan Chittister, OSB