The Meaning of Commitment
(part three)

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Now we are ready to deal with the working paper of commitment: this is a living world; life is alive. and as expressions of life we, too, are alive and sustained by the characteristic vitality of life itself. God is the source of the vitality, the life, of all living things. His energy is available to plants, to animals and to our own bodies if the conditions are met. Life is a responsible activity. What is true for our bodies is also true for mind and spirit. At these levels God is immediately available to us if the door is opened to Him. The door is opened by yielding to him that nerve center where we feel consent or the witholding of it most centrally. Thus, if a man makes his deliberate self-conscious intention the offering to God of his central consent and obedience, then he become energized by the living Spirit of the living God.

Let me hasten to point our that this principle does not exhaust all the possibilities. There seem to be occasions, or better, persons, who have the gift of the Spirit where there is no awareness of any act of commitment initiating it. They are the “once born” souls. Their openness to God is one with their own self-consciousness—to share His life and be flooded by His presence is natural to them.

There is another consideration that must be borne steadily in mind. The working principle we are thinking of has nothing to do with the question of merit or demerit. When the conditions are met, the individual does not “merit” the energizing strength of the life of God. No, the point is that man’s relation to life occurs within a responsible framework—he lives and functions in an orderly context, an essential milieu in which order and not disorder is characteristic. The vast creative mood of existence is creative, not chaotic. There is an essential harmony in all existence, and the life of every living thing shares in it. Man co-operates with the Spirit of God by making himself open and available to it. And this fact is crucial. A man may elect not to do this and thereby create for himself many problems of inner chaos and confusion; these may or may not be assessed as such.

The autonomy of the individual must not be denied. It would seem to follow, then, that if the individual meets the conditions, the results ensue automatically. Let us take a look at Meister Eckhart’s idea. If we reduce commitment to a mechanical process, there is a denial of other prerogatives and aspects of personality. Commitment viewed in such exclusive terms becomes a manipulative device rather than the door through which man enters into a good relationship with God. The yielding of the deep inner nerve center of consent is not a solitary action, unrelated to the structure or context of the life. It is not a unilateral act in the midst of other unilateral acts on the part of the individual. It is, rather, an ingathering of all the phases of ones being, a creative summary of an individual’s life—it is a saturation of the self with the mood and the integrity of assent. Something total within the man says “Yes.” It is a unanimous vote and not a mere plurality. It is the yielding of the mind, yet more than mind; it is the agreement of the self, expressed in an act of will—yet more than will, it is the sensation of all the feeling tones—yet more than emotions. Despite this ramification, the act of commitment may pinpoint a certain moment in time, or a certain encounter in given circumstances, of a place, or an act of decision that stands out boldly on the horizon of all one’s days—the roots spread out in all dimensions of living.

(For the Inward Journey: the writings of Howard Thurman.
Selected by Anne Spencer Thurman. pages 16-18
originally published in Disciplines of the Spirit)

Taking liberty with Thurman: humans co-operate with the Divine Spirit by making themselves open and available. The attitude I hope to exhibit is an attitude of openness, with an expectation that that is the means by which I may participate in the co-creation of the world as it is growing toward what my faith asserts is good, beautiful and true, the means by which we may participate in the co-creation of the world our faith asserts is good, beautiful and true.

And I hope to be available to move in the ways that spirit leads, that intelligence leads, that common sense leads, that artistic inspiration leads. Thus I hope to co-create the good, the beautiful and the true.

I’m preparing a sermon on the theme of Trust in One Another. I’m going to be sharing a bit of congregation-based community organizing theory to raise the centrality of trust which, in a place of divisions, is built by “publicly risking together.” When I think of what Thurman is asking for, which includes yielding to the divine spirit, I can’t imagine that anyone can enter into such an attitude without some sense of developed trust. He’s talking about commitment, and I think I am, too. My ask will be about us committing to find something risky—like honesty—and exploring it together to see where we really can do it. Do we make promises that we do not fulfill? Do we discover that we can fully live into our promises? By such actions—especially if something is meaningful enough, risky enough—we can build trust.

Well, I’m going to share something about my own public risk: I promised myself these posts each morning. The first part of this post I made yesterday with a schedule for it to go live this morning at 6:30, which I am sure it did. But my own comments, I reserved to be written this morning before the post went live—and I didn't. (I don’t know because I needed to sleep in.) The promise was with me (and I guess with the Universe) and so the lack of trust that might have developed was mine alone. But it does make me wonder about the promises I make to myself about myself. How shall I be part of co-creation? I guess, after “falling” . . . by getting up. See you tomorrow!