Nowhere To Go But Up
By Linda Bobbitt
Twice in my life the view from rock bottom included my feet poking through the covers on a hospital bed. Though these episodes were almost 10 years apart, the circumstances that brought me there weren’t all that different. I’d been pouring all my waking energy, talent and skills into the church. The first time I had been the chair of synod council (a regional governing board for ELCA churches and ministries). The second time I was a religious researcher working for the national church. In both cases I worked for the sake of the church and told myself it was what God wanted of me.
Certainly, my work was good and helpful to many, but my approach was sometimes backwards. Though I regularly prayed for guidance, I only really wanted it to address the tasks I assigned myself. “Lord help me do this for you” was the essence of my prayer. It was a reasonable request. Surely God wanted the church to be more vital, for people’s faith to bloom, and for the church to focus on the needs of the poor and disenfranchised. My role was to help keep the church on track and efficient. I told myself, “Of course God wants the church to be on track and efficient. Of course, God wants the church to be successful so that more people are helped and come to know Christ.” So, I applied myself to these things along with many others across the country.
Without realizing it, I had imposed my own Western, outcome-oriented understanding of success on God and God was having none of it. Certainly, God showed up plenty of times before my falls, nudging and guiding me along the way. But when push came to shove, rather than preemptively saving me, God allowed me to crash.
During lucid moments in hospital beds, I reflected on my relationship with God and admitted that I had been talking rather than listening. I had been doing things for God rather than with God.
The time spent in the hospital and later in rehab taught me to surrender and float.
Surrender is the first step of the spiritual journey as articulated by Dorothee Soelle, a twentieth century German Theologian. When we surrender, we let go of our ideas about what God needs or wants from us. This frees our minds to experience God in a new way. Here, wonder and amazement become spiritual practices. We see deep beauty in places we never expected it and joy bubbles forth in response. This is the spiritual journey she describes – a journey from surrender to joy. It doesn’t mean there isn’t work to do, or that we have no part to play. Rather, it means God is responsible for the outcomes, not us. We get to join God and one another in the work, but our worth isn’t determined by our “success”.
This is really hard for most of us to accept. Being loved and valued regardless of our actions, faithfulness or effectiveness simply doesn’t compute in a world that prizes those things above all else.
The spiritual journey is usually imagined as a list of things we must do. Surely, we must pray, confess, read the Bible, go to church, and perform acts of contrition or charity. While Christians do these things, they don’t bring folks closer to God on their own merits. That way of thinking is what Martin Luther called “works righteousness”.
When we float, we allow the Holy Spirit to move us. We become open to what God is actually doing in the world and in our lives, and we are naturally moved into the position where God wants us. When we allow ourselves to float with God, we see the world from a new perspective. We are now open to experiencing wonder or amazement at the inherent beauty of the world because we aren’t viewing everything as a means to an end. Opening our hearts to beauty strums joy in our hearts.
This is the life God intends for us, a life of wonder, amazement and joy. Joy comes after we stop with doing things “for” God and learn to collaborate with God. As we learn to collaborate with God, we go from floating to sailing.
