This started as a note ... Maybe it should have stayed one. It's a little cheeky. A few thoughts around themes of acceptance, resignation, surrender and love.
I’m also feeling the difference between resignation and acceptance. Resignation follows a kind of detached logic—it leads us to passively endure things as they are, as if we have no say. But acceptance is different. To accept the world as it is, while remaining fully present to it, is to recognize our own agency within it. It’s not passive; it’s an active, embodied awareness that we are participants in what unfolds around us.
Sorry to add another comment that is so long, but I find it a fascinating coincidence that these various readings are coinciding in real time. Just after reading your post, I was reading Adam Bucko's "Let Your Heartbreak Be Your Guide" and read this passage about MLK Jr.:
"This is how Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. experienced his own passage from personal powerlessness to God’s power in Montgomery on January 27, 1956, during the now-famous bus boycott. After receiving an anonymous phone call saying to him, 'Leave Montgomery immediately if you have no wish to die,' he got frightened. He hung up the phone, walked to his kitchen, and with trembling hands put on a pot of coffee and sank into a chair at his kitchen table. He described what happened afterward, in these words:
'I was ready to give up. With my cup of coffee sitting untouched before me, I tried to think of a way to move out of the picture without appearing a coward. In this state of exhaustion, when my courage had all but gone, I decided to take my problem to God. With my head in my hands, I bowed over the kitchen table and prayed aloud. The words I spoke to God that midnight are still vivid in my memory. “I am here taking a stand for what I believe is right. But now I am afraid. The people are looking to me for leadership, and if I stand before them without strength and courage, they too will falter. I am at the end of my powers. I have nothing left. I’ve come to the point where I can’t face it alone.” At that moment, I experienced the presence of the Divine as I had never experienced God before. It seemed as though I could hear the quiet assurance of an inner voice saying: “Stand up for justice, stand up for truth; and God will be at your side forever.” Almost at once my fears began to go. My uncertainty disappeared. I was ready to face anything.'3
Dr. King provides us with an example of what can happen when, in the midst of despair, in the midst of helpless vulnerability, we accept our powerlessness. What first appears like weakness actually becomes a gift that leads us to surrender and trust."
Well said - your words reminded me of a passage I've highlighted from Cynthia Bourgeault's Wisdom Jesus: "That state of spacious heart openness is known in spiritual tradition as surrender. Not what you usually think about when you hear the word “surrender,” is it? We usually equate the word with capitulation and consider it a sign of weakness. But surrender, spiritually understood, has nothing to do with outer capitulation, with rolling over and playing dead. It has to do with keeping the right alignment inwardly that allows you to stay in the flow of your deeper sustaining wisdom—to “feel the force,” in those legendary words from the first Star Wars movie. In that state of openness you then decide what you’re going to do about the outer situation. Whatever you do, whether you acquiesce or vigorously resist, your actions will be clear. The seventeenth-century mystic Jacob Boehme had penetrated deeply into this realization when he wrote these words: Here, now, is the right place for you to wrestle before the divine face. If you remain firm, if you do not bend, you shall see and perceive great wonders. You will discover how Christ will storm the hell in you and will break your beasts.2 It is interesting how for Boehme “remain firm and do not bend” is the essence of surrender: exactly the opposite of how we usually use the term. He correctly realizes that surrender as a spiritual act requires “remaining firm”—but along the vertical axis of one’s being, aligned with that deep heart-knowingness, rather than simply allowing oneself to be carried
along in a stream of reactivity at the horizontal level.
Thanks so much for contributing :-) I really like -> " Here, now, is the right place for you to wrestle before the divine face. If you remain firm, if you do not bend, you shall see and perceive great wonders. You will discover how Christ will storm the hell in you and will break your beasts."
And "It has to do with keeping the right alignment inwardly that allows you to stay in the flow of your deeper sustaining wisdom—to “feel the force,” in those legendary words from the first Star Wars movie. In that state of openness you then decide what you’re going to do about the outer situation. Whatever you do, whether you acquiesce or vigorously resist, your actions will be clear. "
Just the right amount of cheekiness.
I’m also feeling the difference between resignation and acceptance. Resignation follows a kind of detached logic—it leads us to passively endure things as they are, as if we have no say. But acceptance is different. To accept the world as it is, while remaining fully present to it, is to recognize our own agency within it. It’s not passive; it’s an active, embodied awareness that we are participants in what unfolds around us.
Sorry to add another comment that is so long, but I find it a fascinating coincidence that these various readings are coinciding in real time. Just after reading your post, I was reading Adam Bucko's "Let Your Heartbreak Be Your Guide" and read this passage about MLK Jr.:
"This is how Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. experienced his own passage from personal powerlessness to God’s power in Montgomery on January 27, 1956, during the now-famous bus boycott. After receiving an anonymous phone call saying to him, 'Leave Montgomery immediately if you have no wish to die,' he got frightened. He hung up the phone, walked to his kitchen, and with trembling hands put on a pot of coffee and sank into a chair at his kitchen table. He described what happened afterward, in these words:
'I was ready to give up. With my cup of coffee sitting untouched before me, I tried to think of a way to move out of the picture without appearing a coward. In this state of exhaustion, when my courage had all but gone, I decided to take my problem to God. With my head in my hands, I bowed over the kitchen table and prayed aloud. The words I spoke to God that midnight are still vivid in my memory. “I am here taking a stand for what I believe is right. But now I am afraid. The people are looking to me for leadership, and if I stand before them without strength and courage, they too will falter. I am at the end of my powers. I have nothing left. I’ve come to the point where I can’t face it alone.” At that moment, I experienced the presence of the Divine as I had never experienced God before. It seemed as though I could hear the quiet assurance of an inner voice saying: “Stand up for justice, stand up for truth; and God will be at your side forever.” Almost at once my fears began to go. My uncertainty disappeared. I was ready to face anything.'3
Dr. King provides us with an example of what can happen when, in the midst of despair, in the midst of helpless vulnerability, we accept our powerlessness. What first appears like weakness actually becomes a gift that leads us to surrender and trust."
Well said - your words reminded me of a passage I've highlighted from Cynthia Bourgeault's Wisdom Jesus: "That state of spacious heart openness is known in spiritual tradition as surrender. Not what you usually think about when you hear the word “surrender,” is it? We usually equate the word with capitulation and consider it a sign of weakness. But surrender, spiritually understood, has nothing to do with outer capitulation, with rolling over and playing dead. It has to do with keeping the right alignment inwardly that allows you to stay in the flow of your deeper sustaining wisdom—to “feel the force,” in those legendary words from the first Star Wars movie. In that state of openness you then decide what you’re going to do about the outer situation. Whatever you do, whether you acquiesce or vigorously resist, your actions will be clear. The seventeenth-century mystic Jacob Boehme had penetrated deeply into this realization when he wrote these words: Here, now, is the right place for you to wrestle before the divine face. If you remain firm, if you do not bend, you shall see and perceive great wonders. You will discover how Christ will storm the hell in you and will break your beasts.2 It is interesting how for Boehme “remain firm and do not bend” is the essence of surrender: exactly the opposite of how we usually use the term. He correctly realizes that surrender as a spiritual act requires “remaining firm”—but along the vertical axis of one’s being, aligned with that deep heart-knowingness, rather than simply allowing oneself to be carried
along in a stream of reactivity at the horizontal level.
Thanks so much for contributing :-) I really like -> " Here, now, is the right place for you to wrestle before the divine face. If you remain firm, if you do not bend, you shall see and perceive great wonders. You will discover how Christ will storm the hell in you and will break your beasts."
And "It has to do with keeping the right alignment inwardly that allows you to stay in the flow of your deeper sustaining wisdom—to “feel the force,” in those legendary words from the first Star Wars movie. In that state of openness you then decide what you’re going to do about the outer situation. Whatever you do, whether you acquiesce or vigorously resist, your actions will be clear. "
I’m glad this wasn’t just a note ❤️