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Much of the pain associated with callings comes
from avoiding them, from not surrendering to
them. However much sacrifice may be
involved, much of the pain we feel in
surrendering to callings actually comes from our
anticipation of the pain and not from the
actual capitulation. Once we do surrender,
we often feel a sense of great relief, and just
as often we are bewildered about why we didn't
do it years ago.
We mistakenly equate surrender with defeat and
sacrifice with annihilation. We bring to
our renunciations the same panic and
anxiety--"Oh God, I can't give that
up"--that we often bring to our
deliberations about intimacy, the fears of being
devoured and overpowered, of giving our lives
away. Granted, parts of us are
broken into smithereens in the process of
following our calls, and they experience real
compromise and real compromise and real
suffering, but this is not defeat any more than
a flower suffers defeat by going to seed.
Furthermore, says theologian Frederich Buechner,
"What's lost is nothing to what's found,
and all the death that ever was, set next to
life, would scarcely fill a cup."
In the religions, myths, and psychologies of the
world, surrender is envisioned not as defeat but
as liberation, and sacrifice typically precedes
a resurrection.
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It's about swapping
something temporal for something transcendent,
about turning suffering into victory. It
explains why God proved merciful once Jonah
finally took the plunge. It explains why
the feast days of the Christian martyrs--those
extremists for liberation--are celebrated not on
their birthdays but on their death days, because
that's when they were considered to have been
truly "born." Like evaporating
water, we give up an earthly bond in order to
rise.
Historically, that which is sacrificed is also
venerated. It is, as the word sacrifice
itself suggests, "made sacred" and not
simply tipped over the side and done away with;
sacrifice is not merely a means to an end.
Many sacrifices were made on altars, which
elevated whatever was placed on them. By
making sacrifices, we honor not just what dies
but also the act of death, the skill of
the dying, by which we also honor the ultimate
fact of life, the way the game is played:
we get and we give, we win some and we lose
some, and life is the trapeze act we perform
between the two.
Whatever we have to give up to follow a calling
is, in a sense, giving its life for our
benefit. We sanctify it by recognizing
that we wouldn't be able to liberate
ourselves to follow that calling without
it being sacrificed. Gratitude, of course,
is less of a stretch in hindsight, once we've
safely negotiated the passage and can look back
and see how critical it was to our
unfolding. If we can let go of the trapeze
platform and make our necessary surrenders, we
may be liberated, but if, while still suspended
in empty air, we can say "thank you,"
we're damn near enlightened.
* * *
Although surrender is not defeat, the
unwillingness to surrender is defeat, and
one reason we're often unwilling is that we
can't abide one of the corollaries of sacrifice,
which is that every sacrifice involves some
suffering. Our avoidances of suffering
demonstrate that we're afraid to suffer.
But the degree to which we're able to
bear suffering largely determines the
degree to which we intend it to happen. If
we don't volunteer for it, we are more likely to
turn bitter about it. . . .
By refusing to make sacrifices, we defeat our
own purposes. Our most desperate hopes
elude us, and we spend our lives merely catching
sight of their heels disappearing around
corners. Late in life, we may find
ourselves trying to buy our souls back from the
devil or striking desperate deals with
God. No amount of security,
accomplishment, or busyness will distract us
from the knowledge of what we gave up. No
amount of success, money, food, sex, or booze
will take the place of the offering that needs
to be made. There are no substitute
sacrifices, no cheap adaptations, no cosmetic
changes. If the status quo has got to go,
working double-time to prove its merit will not
appease the soul, which is no fool. If you
feel restless about using your talents and
attempt to assuage that restlessness by constant
travel because you figure that the antidote to
restlessness is motion, you're playing a
shell game with the gods, who can see through
stone.
If a sacrifice doesn't put you out, doesn't hurt
a little or even a lot, it's probably
insufficient to bring on the changes you're
after. If your partner is crying out to
you for attention, giving up the occasional golf
game probably won't suffice to call your
relationship back from the brink. If you
feel called to share your art or writing with
the world, but you show it only to friends and
family, you're not stepping all the way up to
the plate. If your body is telling you it
needs more exercise, then taking the staircase
up to your second-floor office instead of the
elevator is little more than a symbolic gesture,
faint praise, a plastic Jesus.
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