Surrender

I finished Paul Knitter’s book this morning: Without Buddha I Could not be a Christian. As I mentioned in a former blog, this is one book in which I underlined almost every sentence because I so identified with his experience. In the end he showed that his Buddha experience is one that focuses on one’s being, his Jesus experience on how that being is manifest in one’s living in the world. Knitter was a peace activist so his focus of being is Being Peace. And his doing is his involvement in trying to bring peace to the world through his relationships and through various involvements in the peace movement.

I’d like to add one thought to his wonderful presentation. As I have experienced becoming or awakening through the practices that our Buddhist brothers and sisters suggest, I have also experienced a surrender that I have not been able to achieve through any practices offered to me throughout my Christian upbringing. I am learning to surrender “in the moment”, paying attention to leadings that come as a whisper, sometimes barely sensed. There may com as shift in direction as I walk through my day. I may be called to go where I’d not planned to go or go where I’d planned but find a totally different experience than I’d thought.  Chance encounters. Traffic jams. Detours.  A call to serve that makes me have to drop other plans for the day.  I pay attention to all invitations knowing that God’s will for me may be hidden in there somewhere.

I have also learned to surrender outcomes and having to know the why’s of things. Last week I found myself helping a woman who has no car and needed to get to Best Buy to get a new phone and then who spent 45 minutes sitting in my car trying to get it activated using my phone. As we sat, I was aware that I would likely be late for a gathering with other friends. A call from my daughter to do her a favor and the gathering was off my list of things to do altogether. But I knew, I really did, that this was a whisper from God that I could either surrender to or resist.