As I study the monastic vows, I am reading about this sort of surrender that nature demonstrates to us so well. For we humans it brings along some extra baggage though. The prioress of the Benedictine Sisters in Bristow, VA, Cecilia Dwyer, quoted Charles Cummings, OSCO in a piece of writing on obedience:
The mystical death-experience of total surrender issues in an experience of exhilarating freedom, a rebirth into a new place of life. But total surrender is frightening and arouses my anxiety and resistance. The anxious feeling I have is a sign that I am being invited to move beyond my present state of complacent existence into a new and closer relationship with the hidden God.
This feeling of fear is not foreign to me, nor to any other human being, I'm certain. In these moments, and in my better moments, I remember to look to nature for a sort of balm for my spirit. It is nature that continually teaches me that we simply must give ourselves over as we are; there is beauty in that. Today I went out and tried to capture the beauty of total surrender in a few photographs.
I am most often one with eyes fixed to finding beauty in the ideal, but today I found it in reality. Our fears are real, too, and we must pay attention to them, but we must also pay attention to the promise they hold. Kathleen Norris writes in Amazing Grace:
Yes, it [fear] can stymie us, but it can also set us free. It is fear--in the old sense of awe--that allows us to recognize the holy in our midst, fear that gives us the courage to listen, and to let God awaken in us capacities and responsibilities we have been afraid to contemplate.
So, yes, fear is real, but Christian fear must push us to look beyond, to believe in the God of all creation. This God calls to us: "Do not fear; I love you; you are mine." To what else would I rather surrender? What else could be more beautiful?
Let us walk in the holy presence.
