Floating, Life and Death
Several mystics, poets and other spiritual leaders have written about floating with the Spirit. Below I’d like to share a couple of my favorites. The first comes to me from Angie Androit who shared this poem with me recently. (Thank you Angie!) It is by Denise Levertov:
As swimmers dare
to lie face to the sky
and water bears them,
as hawks rest upon air
and air sustains them,
so would I learn to attain
freefall, and float
into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace,
knowing no effort earns
that all-surrounding grace.
The second poem comes from Rumi, the ancient Sufi mystic. I read this years ago and found it quite objectionable at first, even while I simultaneously felt its truth. Let me know how this poem strikes you.
Both a swimmer and a drowned man are in the water;
the latter is borne by the water and controlled by it,
while the swimmer is borne along by his own power and of his own volition.
Every movement made by the drowned man
- indeed, every act and word that issue from him -
comes from the water, not from him...
The saints are like this.
They have died before death.
Martin Luther described this kind of death when he talked about the “big death”. The death of our bodies he considered the “little death”. It is little because Luther points out that our actions have no bearing on our salvation. We are saved by God’s will - God’s grace. We do not have to work to impress God or to earn God’s appreciation or forgiveness. When we try to earn God’s love or even God’s appreciation - to swim for God, we make our lives about ourselves. We are, once again, working for God rather than with God. The act of floating - of surrendering — is the natural response to our recognition of God’s active presence in our lives and in the world. When we recognize God’s presence, the only thing we can do is stand in awe and be drawn into God’s flow.
To float is to surrender. To surrender is to let our own agenda, goals, and specific dreams die, and allow ourselves to be open to the movement of God. The idea of letting our dreams die sounds harsh and completely counter cultural. Aren’t we supposed to pursue our dreams no matter what?
Yet God invites us to let our ideas and dreams rest and sometimes die, trusting that God has something even better in mind. …
