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June 20, 2007
Hello everyone,
There is much to be said about trust. Without it, close relationships could never be what they are; without trust, human beings could never come together and experience any full intimacy. And with trust comes another often necessary player: surrender. To the degree that we can, we try to harmonize our wills and wishes with those of the other person. This process involves negotiation, compromise, and trust: we must surrender ourselves and our wants to one another for the greatest good of our relationship. And while this process is almost always reciprocal in the healthiest relationships, it is not always evenly divided. In a relationship of total trust and surrender, the weaker in any given area ideally surrenders to the stronger so that both might profit: if I am better at thinking on my feet and she is better at speaking in public, we coordinate our strengths for the mutual benefit of all involved. Trust and surrender are a sort of dance that daily form the basis of healthy relationships, particularly those most intimate in which two persons learn to become of one mind and of one flesh.
The spiritual journey is a partnership between ourselves and God. Unlike human relationships, we are the weaker party in every way, which calls for a much higher level of trust and surrender on our part. We learn to trust God by the accumulated experience of his faithfulness in providing for our needs and sustaining us; we learn to surrender often by painful necessity when the circumstances of our lives are beyond our control. The more implicitly we learn to trust God and to lean on him, the simple and more childlike our faith becomes: our faith becomes more rarefied.
We have learned throughout our lives to adopt a sophisticated stance. There are several reasons for this tendency, but each reason ultimately answers to self-preservation. The sophisticated person is not naive and thus not easily hurt; sophistication is adopted as a buffer and a shield. Sophistication gives us an edge and advantage: we are less dependent on others and we do not have to take as many risks. Sophistication helps us to navigate society’s maze, learning the ins and outs of the system and who to say what to when. The goal of sophistication is invariably self-interested.
There are two powerful and at times apparently conflicting forces at work within us: the one for independence, the other for unity. Sophistication can help us gain the former, but the latter, more costly longing is never fully culminated until sophistication gives way to vulnerability and we risk appearing naive, standing fully exposed before the other.
As our partnership with God grows in strength and in experience, our faith becomes simpler. We learn to trust God in ways others consider foolish; we learn over and over again to surrender to him those things that we cannot control, believing that he works out all things for the good of those who thus trust him. At times, those watching our lives must shake their heads in wonder, seeing one so hopelessly unsophisticated and uncultured. Yet if another looks long enough, a quiet inner strength will be the defining feature that emerges. In an interesting paradox, inner vulnerability gives us outer strength, just as intimate human relationships (while they can hurt us badly if they go wrong) can give us a renewed energy to face the world and to do the things we must do in this life. Sophistication, if it is to have any inner meaning, must be tempered with the willingness to risk naiveté, for it is only as one becomes as a little child that one understands the true nature of the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven is built on peace and love, but peace and love are themselves built on trust and surrender. Too much sophistication, and trust and surrender become sacrificed on the altar of self-preservation.
Trusting God can be difficult. An invisible partner who does not speak as humans speak can appear to the sophisticated mind a stumbling stone, and not one of us has not stumbled upon that very crag. We would be a most unusual citizen of the modern world if we did not wonder whether we were delusional at times: if we were the poor victims of wish fulfillment, sublimating our deepest longings in the form of an imaginary friend whom we naively imagine is at once both bigger and stronger than we are. The fruit of this kind of sophisticated thinking is discontent, and, in more advanced stages, an off-putting pride.
The naive mind is not without its questions, but the naive mind continues to speak to the invisible presence: rarely seeing, hearing often only in the form of intuition and sometimes not at all. The one who walks and talks with God sometimes, perhaps often, walks and talks in the dark. That is the reality of the life unseen. The fruit of this kind of naive dialog with the unseen partner—at least until the sophisticated mind concerns itself with self-preservation—is a deep and abiding sense of peace that grows stronger, a sense of calm when looking into the abyss into which all, the sophisticate and the naive alike, must peer. That faith, that hope, and the sense of love it inspires is truly like a seed and it continues to grow, our unseen partner becoming more and more real to us in the process. We learn to trust him more; we learn to surrender to him to increasing degree; that troublesome sophisticated mind troubles us less and less. The naive faith is a learned ignorance, and we must court and cultivate it if it is to grow. Faith is the mustard seed that makes the impossible possible, and when the impossible becomes possibility, faith has become sight.
The sophisticated mind has self-preservation on its mind; intimate relationships, however, involve self-forgetfulness. Self-forgetfulness is neither wise nor possible where there is not mutual trust and surrender. The sophisticated mind knows this. But the naive, uncultured mind, precisely because it is naive, refuses to let such knowledge stand in the way of its ultimate liberation. It trusts, at times blindly; it believes, at times in the face of utter hopelessness. It is, after all, naive. Sometimes in the world of sophisticates it gets slapped and kicked around. Yet even here, a strange reverence often pervades in the face of naiveté and it becomes its own protection. The very gruffest is at times seized deep within: “Leave him alone. He has the mind of a child. Can’t you see that, you oaf?” And so, the naive one is sometimes slapped and kicked, but often walks unharmed where sophistication fears to tread. The naive one walks through a world that is not his home: his world is one of love and peace where dreams come true and where promises are always kept: why on earth or heaven above would someone even consider breaking a promise? His mind is simple, and webs of deceit have not trashed it up.
For the spiritual pilgrim, the life of naiveté is a learned ignorance that comes neither naturally nor automatically. Yet the life of naiveté is the life of the child, and it is the children who enter the kingdom of heaven. A child is not only dependent and transparent, a child also is born of adult union. Those children who are fortunate know their mother and their father; so too, the spiritual pilgrim is not only dependent and transparent, but he knows his father and his father knows him. It does not matter what the passers-by think of him: sometimes he notices and sometimes he doesn’t. What matters is that he knows his father and his father knows him. As long as his father walks by his side, he is safe and he is content. Though he walk through the valley of the shadow of death, he fears no evil.
The spiritual pilgrim walks by faith and not by sight. That is to large degree what makes his journey so difficult. Far more times than he cares to count, the rains have pelted him, the rocks have dashed his feet, and the winds have assailed on every side. Yet he is never alone. Even when he feels like there is no one there—which is far too often for his own comfort—he is never alone. His father plots his course and paves his way, not always to the exclusion of the wind, rain, and rocks, but rather in spite of them. For wind, rain, and rocks confront all weary travelers on this journey, though some travelers prefer to walk alone. He, however, is never alone and this is his great secret and his great strength. He has learned the secret of the naive mind.
God bless,
Eric
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