You can’t surrender while still white-knuckling the steering wheel. If we’re constantly telling reality what it is, then we can’t let it be what it is. We’ll never hear God’s voice if we don’t shut up, let go, and stop trying to put our words in His mouth. This thing goes so much deeper than anything anyone’s “How It Is” narrative could possibly touch.
Yes, the fundamental basis for contemplative prayer, which according to the CCC achieves true union with the prayer of Christ, which is something that our Christian prayer
should do.
And I like your point that you can’t surrender while white-knuckling the steering wheel.
It’s late, but I think what I’ve been trying to say here is that the original post is, as I read it, speaking of a movement toward sainthood, which every Catholic should aspire to. And being a saint is IMO a very, very different thing from being someone who holds all the right opinions or who defends the faith well in conversation; I think this is being missed a lot in this thread. Those things you could do with your mind alone and has nothing whatsoever to do with true surrender.
You are right. After a 12 year Dark Night, followed by amazing healing – against medical hopes much less expectations – and delivery into the kingdom, I can’t see any other way a Christian would want to be. I spent around 50,000 hours during that period working on activities to bring my mind and soul back to sanity, and I did not get the treasure by doing that. But it was the cost of the field where the treasure was buried. Truly, if we but “taste and see” the Goodness of the Lord, we would want nothing else, and how to get it is to “seek first the things of the kingdom.” To seek the things of the kingdom, we must renounce our dependence on things of the world, including our worldly thoughts.
The OP only mentioned ‘extreme’ situations as being justified in leaving. A good idea in theory - but not applicable in practice. Remember the nurse who committed suicide because of that stupid prank phone call re. kate’s pregnancy? = stupid phone call - doesnt seem to.justify suicide, we might judge!. Maybe it would have been better if that nurse had not gone into work that day! Maybe she should ‘toughen up’, we might judge from our superior position of ignorance. Ultimately, the individual is the expert in their own situation & just because wounds are not obvious - does not mean they are not there, or they did not occur.
I don’t know of the phone call. I used to work at a telephone counselor on the Youth Crisis Hotline so I am very interested in suicide and phone calls. I don’t know what you’re saying; apparently you derived a meaning from what I wrote that wasn’t intentional. My point was that especially on CAF we advise each other to avoid uncomfortable situations and basically try to escape the evil in the world rather than do the Psalm-23 thing, fearing no evil. That said, if a person is suicidal, there are many ways you might help them through correct intervention (and telling them suicide is “stupid” for example is not generally helpful) but at some point you have to let go.
There are so many misconceptions about suicide that it hurts people every day – for example it is a lie that if a person is at least talking about it they aren’t going to do it right away. In reality almost every person who takes his/her own life, first tries to communicate it to others. We want to help them reframe their situation such as to see there may be an “out” they haven’t thought of, but I would never tell a suicidal person I know only by phone or Internet to go back into the fire and learn to deal with it. They may end up attaining “perfect peace” out of it, but not in the intended way.
Of course, this poor girl was most likely not attempting to be a spiritual warrior or represent the perfect peace of Christ - in fact we will never know the nature of her situation - but if she had said to me that her work (or whatever) was making her depressed, i would not force her into a situation she didnt want to be in.
So she was forced to go into work even though she was depressed, and a prank phone call “pushed her over the line?”
Nobody’s talking about judging other people or forcing anybody into anything. It’s also not about ‘toughening up’; toughening up would be to increase one’s defenses and resistances. This is about actively lowering defensiveness and resistances, to the point where it’s like Alan’s example of the doors opening and the attacker breezing harmlessly through.
I can’t control other people do with regard to this subject, so I don’t try to, it’s none of my business. But it is in my experience a very good path that is worth talking about.
Clearly you understand what I’m getting at. Becoming “tough” through will power builds the ego, and takes us further from surrender to the Lord. The difference could be hard for an average person to discern looking at someone from the outside; maybe if I were “tough” than I would stand and accept offensive things without flinching, whereas if I were “mortified” I would also stand and accept offensive things without flinching. The differences are maybe more internal; is my apparent calmness an act, or is it a true expression of interior peace? Am I good at dealing with feelings of insult, or am I “dead” to insult so that it no longer has a grip on me?
[BIBLEDRB]Rom 7:1-6[/BIBLEDRB]
In the NAB translation, verse 6 is: “But now we are released from the law, dead to what held us captive, so that we may serve in the newness of the spirit and not under the obsolete letter.” So like you say it’s not about how much technical knowledge we have of the law.
Alan
