from our Lay Leader
People are “wild, uncontrollable, dangerous, unpredictable, crazy, beautiful. And if I sort of see each person as their own embodiment of nature’s power, I can watch it with much more wonder than I used to try to control it with much more fear.” – Elizabeth Gilbert
What Ms. Gilbert is saying is that we are afraid to let life play out as it appears to be going. We foresee a trajectory and think that is not good and out of fear of the future that we have forecast, we attempt to change the course of that future. However, we believe we have more power than we do to change people and their decisions and actions, and so we set ourselves up for frustration and failure mixed with fear and dread.
We also arrogantly believe we can accurately predict the future course of events and their consequences, when in fact we can not. The world is so much more complex than we can understand, and even magnifying our brains’ power with the use of computers cannot overcome our shortcomings in prediction because of our wrong assumptions and incomplete models.
Instead, we need to let our experience of reality — our belief in a greater power, our understanding of what we call God — lead us to surrender our desire to control events and outcomes and to accept what is and what will be and to be grateful and awed by the working out of reality. When we take this step of surrender and acceptance of grace, we find that our fear disappears and is replaced by wonder. We become an observer simultaneous with being a participant, and in our observation of the present without concern for the future, we find a new way of comprehending the world free from the stress of trying to control it.
Our mind believes its job is to protect the body, but it tries to take over all control of the body and deny that the body has its own intelligence, a wisdom that resides in the muscles and organs of the body, beyond the brain. As powerful as the brain is, it is not complete without the body and soul.
As God is tripartite, so are we. Our human trinity is mind, body, and soul. The soul is who we are in God and who God is in us. The mind and body are not complete without the soul. The mind and soul are not complete without the body. Even after our earthly bodies give out, we will receive new bodies. We will never be disembodied souls. We will always be comprised of mind, body, and soul. Forever.
Our mind has a totalitarian urge to rule over the body and soul. Our life-long task is to restore the rightful role of the body and soul to our personhood and that is why we seek to be spiritual, to recognize our completeness, to deny the mind full control and authority, and to allow our soul to be the center of our being, because the soul has God’s imprint and that divine impression within each of us is always saying to the mind and body: “Do not be afraid. I am with you always.”
Surrender your desire to control everything and accept what is and what will be. Look at reality with awe and be grateful that God has given you a supporting role in His Masterpiece.