"Surrender, Being Held, Letting Go"
I remember going to the grocery store, about 14 months ago, and sensing the frenetic energy of my fellow humans. I remember looking at their partly covered faces, and seeing just their eyes, opened wide, darting quickly. Their pace, pushing their carts was quick, and yet precise. They were on a mission. A survival mission.
I, like so many others, was there to gather food for my family, and in this way I was tied to the earliest human beings. A primary instinct triggered by an external threat, it was time to gather up resources, to prepare for survival on our own. I remember turning the corner to the dry goods aisle, normally brimming with blue boxes of pasta, and bags of rice, now completely barren. A few of us stragglers, too late at this point, stood in the aisle and scratched our heads.
Not to mention the day I arrived at Costco and found myself situated in the hoard of people pressing against the opening doors to make a mad dash to the far corner for the new shipment of toilet paper. I wasn’t there for the paper, but I was there at that moment to feel the pulse of survival instinct.
While our supplies of food and toiletries have rebounded, I do wonder about the impacts that living in this heightened state of survival for the last 14 months will have on us. We have lived within an atmosphere of hypervigilance, of darting out of the way of our fellow humans as they approach us on the sidewalk. We have been in an extended period of collective fear and anxiety, of being on high alert.
For any of us on this call this morning who have experienced intense anxiety, we know that one panic attack requires at least a few days of tenderness and rest. The surge of stress response from our nervous system does a number on us physically. For me, I experience brain fog for several days after, and my bed calls to me throughout the entire day.
As we begin to notice our physical spaces reopening, and even the talk of West Hills Friends reopening to in-person gatherings, I wonder what it will be like for our bodies to come down from this heightened survival state?
A few years ago I was suffering from intense shoulder and neck pain, that was causing me prolonged and debilitating headaches. Our own Diane Beebee’s daughter, Erin Eichenberger reached out to me, offering her incredible gift of massage to me. I visited her office and laid face down on the table. She took my left arm in her lap, and said, “go ahead and relax that arm Mark, I got it.” What followed was a five-minute battle with my brain.
As you heard me talk about last week, I stepped into a role following the painful separation of my parents when I was 11 years old. That role was the primary support person for my two younger brothers. I realized that I needed to be strong, and solid for them to get through this awful time. Little did I know, that would set me up for this very moment on the massage table with Erin because when she put her own strong hands on my tensed shoulder and arm she sighed deeply and said in the most comforting and understanding voice, “oh Mark, oh, oh Mark, my friend, you have been holding so much, huh?”
The rubber band-like muscles of my upper torso were pulled as tight as they would go, and they’ve been locked in that position for decades. In that moment, we knew we were up against the challenge of inviting my body to surrender, to come down from survival mode. It wasn’t going to happen without a fight.
Then Erin said something so compelling to me. She said, “Mark, go ahead and give all your weight down into the table, feel it running like water through the legs of the table, through the foundation of the floor, and right down into the dirt below it. Give all of your weight and tension to Mother Earth. She can hold it you know. She can hold it for you. She wants to hold it for you.”
That little meditation rocked my world. But at the moment my brain disagreed with what Erin had just said. She said Mother Earth could hold it for me and my brain said, “She shouldn’t have to.”
My guilt showed up big time. I said to myself, “haven’t we done enough already? haven’t we given Mother Earth too much to hold already? She doesn’t need another white, straight man to give her any more of my crap to carry.”
I’ve wrestled with that voice inside my brain for the years after I first thought them. And they are showing up for me now as I think about what it means for us to be emerging from this prolonged state of survival.
And the word nourishment is arising for me now. As an eleven-year-old boy, I took on the role of nourisher, and that role entailed being strong. It required steadfastness. It required not needing another person for my well-being. It required showing up and not allowing people to doubt me. And I carried that role long past the days when it was required because I assumed that the only way I was worth anything in this world to anyone was by playing my part. By assuming my role.
And yet it was wildly individualistic. It was unyielding to abundance. It was charting its own path. It was a closed-off system.
I know that I am not alone in this. In fact, I am steeped in the ancestral legacy of survival, namely a settler/colonizer ancestral legacy, where survival depended on harnessing of our own power and manufacturing the terms of our thriving, often on the backs of other humans labor, and the plundering of the natural world for our purposes.
When I heard Erin say, “You can give it to Mother Earth” that didn’t seem fair to me because I was aware of the legacy in which I live. But giving oneself to Mother Earth, or offering ourselves up to the nourishment of our Mother does mean we exploit her.
I remember I gave a similar message, about comfort in the lap of God a few months into the pandemic, and our own Erica Huber shared a powerful story of her memories of laying on her Mother’s lap in the church pews on Sunday, and her mama running her fingers through her hair. Erica spoke about the comfort she felt at that moment, the surrender, and the peace. And I thought that at that moment Erica was experiencing perhaps the most profound moment each Sunday morning in that Church building, being lovingly and tenderly held by her mama. What if that is what we experienced of God on a daily basis, instead of the stern and judgmental and closed off parent?
That image has stuck with me, and especially now as I imagine our way forward as the pandemic loosens its hold on us. As we come down off this heightened state of vigilance and striving, what if we found ourselves in the wide, capable, supportive, caring, loving lap of the Divine?
In 2 Corinthians Paul offers us this, “Blessed be the Abba God, the God of our Savior Jesus Christ, the Source of all mercies and the God of all consoling, who comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the same comforting God has given us.”
I think this type of settling into nourishment changes our hearts, fundamentally. This type of giving up of oneself will move us into a liberating surrender and make us profoundly appreciative of that which holds us. That appreciation won’t permit us to harm that which gives us comfort and life. We won’t be tempted towards plunder, or domination, or control. Imagine with me the loosening of those tightened bands of muscle in our jaws and shoulders, imagine with me the soft fingers moving through your hair and the warmth of your head in the lap of who holds you as their beloved.
She can take that weight because she wants to. She takes that weight because she knows she gives nothing more than her loving attention and presence. She gives you that space because she loves you, and knows that this love is sacred and real. She gives us that space because she knows that it will transform us, and we will in turn provide the same love and attention, and care to others.
Some Queries :
What have you been holding? How heavy is it? How do you feel about holding it still?
What kind of support do you need right now? How do you feel about your needs?
What particular images of God or the Divine are showing up for you during open worship?