Abandonment

“I can’t make any plans!’ A close friend is bemoaning her current reality and I resonate completely. It’s a refrain I am hearing over and over. In ZOOM conversations, back yard visits, and socially distanced gatherings, the word “Uncertainty,” keeps cropping up. With Covid, the ambiguity in every-day-life has increased exponentially. “Is it safe to go grocery shopping, or should I continue with on-line orders? Can I meet a friend for coffee at a café, and if so, indoors or out? Should I send my kids to school or sign them up for on-line learning? Do I need a to wear a mask here, or here?” We are constantly having to ask ourselves the questions, “How do we stay safe? How do we help others stay safe?” It is our new task to navigate life in the face of a virus where so much is still unknown and the future so uncertain.

It’s not only Covid that has brought us to this place of unease. Polarizing politics accompanied by the economic shutdown contribute to our sense of a future beyond our predicating and out of our control. Who knows what will happen next? We live in uncertainty and it is an awkward and uncomfortable place to be. I know I much prefer clarity. There is a security in planning, in thinking I know what’s coming. Give me some facts and I can make decisions. I can plan, manage outcomes and feel safe. The future becomes less scary.

But, as a friend wisely noted, maybe that has always been an illusion. Our sense of control, our certainty about next steps, and the belief that we know what life has in store for us, perhaps that has always been deceptive. After all, have we not all learned, at one time or another, to our shock, that we are only one crisis or a catastrophe away from the frightening, awful truth that we are not in control or in charge of anything important. We only thought we were. The pandemic has simply brought this sharply home.

Anxiety, uncertainty about the future: how do to live in this state of limbo, when each day is like ‘Groundhog Day,’ the Bill Murray movie where he is condemned to repeat the same day over and over until he redeems it? For me, the only recourse is a spiritual one and it is the invitation to trust that a good God holds the future, even when it is seems so uncertain to me.

I remind myself of author Sydney Callahan’s great statement: “I may not know the future, but I know who holds the future.” And when I am especially worried, I turn to Charles de Foucald’s ‘Prayer of Abandonment’. It challenges me to remember my fundamental belief: that God is indeed trustworthy – a belief that can get overshadowed when I am anxious.

The prayer is especially good for that. Carlo Carretto in commenting on the prayer asks whether or not you can pray the entire prayer through without stopping out of fear. When I first tried it years ago, I could not. It took a long while and now, even as it has become a foundational prayer for me, every once in awhile, I get caught and have to regroup and recentre myself in order to pray it without fear and even then, it is sometimes with trembling.

The heart of the prayer is this: Do I trust God enough to abandon myself to God? Let’s face it, I can only do so if I find God trustworthy. It’s a profound question, revelatory of our deepest understanding of God. I can only entrust myself into God’s hands if I believe first, that God is good, and secondly that God desires only good for me, for all humankind, and for all creation.

When everything is, ‘up in the air,’ it is hard to keep our feet on the ground, our hearts peaceful and our spirits settled. It’s hard to live in tranquillity and peace. Then, more than ever, we need to remember, that, yes, we do not know the future, but, we never have. Our ability to live into the future with equanimity needs to lie in something – someone – beyond our limited, finite selves. “I do not know the future, but I know who holds the future: a good and gracious God.” Only that belief allows me to relinquish anxiety, embrace uncertainty, and trust that, “All will be well and all manner of things will be well.”

By Sandra Prather, HOMI