The Meaning of Commitment
(part two)

In Christianity there is ever the central, inescapable demand of surrender. The assumption is that this is well within the power of the individual. If the power is lacking, every effort must be put forth to find out what the hindrance is. No exception is permissible. “If the eye is a hindrance, pluck it out . . . if the arm is a hindrance, cut it off.” Whatever stands in the way of the complete and full surrender, we must search it out and remove it. If a bad relationship is a hindrance, one must clean it up. In other words, whatever roadblocks appear, the individual must remove them. The yielding of the very nerve center of one’s consent is a private, personal act in which a human being, as sovereign, says “Yes.” The ability to do this, to say “Yes,” is not the result of any special talent, gift, or endowment. It is not the product of any particular status due to birth, social definition, race, or national origin. It is not a power one can exercise only if given the right by one’s fellows. It is not contingent upon wealth or poverty, sickness or health, creed or absence of creed. No, the demand is direct and simple: Surrender your inner consent to God—this is your sovereign right—this is your birthright privilege. And a man can do it directly and in his own name. For this he needs no special sponsorship. He yields his heart to God and in so doing experiences for the first time a sense of coming home and of being at home.

Here we look squarely into the face of the demand of the Master concerning the Kingdom of God and the meaning of discipleship. It is expressed thus:

And a scribe came up and said to him, “Teacher, I will follow you anywhere”; Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, wild birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” . . . Another of the disciples said to him, “Lord, let me go and bury my father first of all”; Jesus said to him, “Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead.”

Matthew 9:19-22

For where your treasure lies, your heart will lie there too. The eye is the lamp of the body: so, if your Eye is generous, the whole of your body will be illumined, but if your Eye is selfish, the whole of your body will be darkened. And if your very light turns dark, then—what a darkness it is! No one can serve two masters: either he will hate one and love the other, or else he will stand by the one and despise the other—you cannot serve both God and Mammon. . . . Seek God’s Realm and his goodness, and all that will be yours over and above.

Matthew 6:21-24, 33

Oswald McCall [in The Hand of God, 1957] gives an exciting dimension to the concept in these words:

Be under no illusion, you shall gather to yourself the images you love. As you go, the shapes, the lights, the shadows of the things you have preferred will come to you, yes, inveterately, inevitably as bees to their hives. And there in your mind and spirit they will leave with you their distilled essence, sweet as honey or bitter as gall . . .

Cleverness may select skillful words to cast a veil about you, and circumspection may never sleep, yet you will not be hid. No.

As year adds to year, that face of yours, which once lay smooth in your baby crib, like an unwritten page, will take to itself lines, and still more lines, as the parchment of an old historian who jealously sets down all the story. And there, more deep than acids etch the steel, will grow the inscribed narrative of your mental habits, the emotions of your heart, your sense of conscience, your response to duty, what you think of your God and of your fellowmen and of yourself. It will all be there. For men become like that which they love, and the name thereof is written other brows.

(For the Inward Journey: the writings of Howard Thurman.
Selected by Anne Spencer Thurman. pages 15-16
originally published in Disciplines of the Spirit)

“He yields his heart to God.” To the poetry that emerges from the deepest depths of my conscience, of my love of the beautiful, of my desire for fuller intimacy. Yes, I yield my heart to these.

“[In] so doing [one] experiences for the first time a sense of coming home and of being at home.” Can this be true? Have I not had a home all along? Have I not been “coming home and being at home” with each sincere meditation, with each act of justice-seeking, with each stroke of thoughtful pen?

I love the citing of Oswald McCall, to “grow the inscribed narrative of your mental habits, the emotions of your heart, your sense of conscience, your response to duty.” That is what this morning time is about, for me; in and of itself, of course, and the centering it gives my thought-life in these complicated social times. But as I struggle, my heart-mind comes to the questions of what I think of my God and my fellows and myself, yes. How am I living more artfully, more compassionately, even more nobly as a result of the surrender of this time to contemplation?

It just hit me. I think of my elders and my ancestors, those who gave much so that I might be. I think of my descendants, those who accompany me in life and those yet unborn whose way I help prepare. And I think of my siblings in life, those known to me and those unknown. This is the family of humanity which is my family. This is the home to which I may come. And perhaps this is for the first time, this sense of coming home and being at home.

All good wishes, friends. Ten days in! The days are lengthening, and Spring is coming.