Surrendering

Amidst the continuing preparations for celebrating Christmas and welcoming the New Year, the inspiring challenge of finding the good around and within ourselves also intensifies. Last week we started with the preposition that this time of the year is also a very good time to learn to live better. A friend with Spanish heritage pointed out that we can split the word “Christmas” and write two words, “Christ Mas”, to mean more Christ. I agreed with a smile of gratitude.

The encouragement to live more meaningfully was initiated with the proposal of last week's article that Christmas means to attentively listen and learn to believe in the impossible. Listening was differentiated from just hearing with the element of focused attention while one example of a human impossibility but in the realm of the heavenly power is that of the birth of a child by a virgin. Last Sunday's message added that Christmas is also about surrendering. What can we surrender? The resource person proposed that we can considering giving up control over circumstances, the combats or conflicts that in a way hinder the growth of the fruits of the spirit, and the concept of blessings or entitlements.

Parents have an interesting time of providing the nurturing response of “letting go” of their children as they will be our children in our lifetime. However, there is a time to surrender control over our children for them to spread their wings and soar. Each parent hopefully finds the appropriate time to swallow the risk to let them be by pointing them to maturity. We can learn to surrender control over circumstances better by living not be sight but with eyes closed knowing that life will continue with the certainty that the sun will rise tomorrow.

Surrendering our conflicts can be start with learning that there is wisdom in knowing that it is better to be kind rather than being right. Defending our rights can utilize so much resources and cause damage to health that fighting is not productive. Surrendering or improving our concept of blessings can start with removing our belief of entitlements. That we earn this and that and therefore are entitled to this and that and these benefits are due to us. We need to be able to differentiate a payment from a gift in to help us acknowledge underserved blessings or grace.

Let us end with an attempt to smile, to start the attempt to surrender those that need to be given up with the following anecdote. A Manila jeepney driver reaches the Pearly Gates and announces his presence to St. Peter, who looks him up in his Big Book. Upon reading the entry for the driver, Peter invites him to grab a silk robe and a golden staff and to proceed into Heaven. A preacher is next in line behind the jeepney driver and has been watching these proceedings with interest. He announces himself to St. Peter. Upon scanning the preacher's entry in the Big Book, St. Peter furrows his brow and says, "Okay, we'll let you in, but take that cloth robe and wooden staff."

The preacher is astonished and replies, "But I am a man of the cloth. You gave that cab driver a gold staff and a silk robe. Surely I rate higher than a Manila jeepney driver." St. Peter responded matter-of-factly: "Here we are interested in results. When you preached, people slept. When the Manila jeepney driver drove his Jeep, people prayed." Malipayong Pasko ug Mauswagong Bagong Tuig sa tanan.*