The Avowal, Denise Levertov
As swimmers dare
to lie face to the sky
and water bears them,
as hawks rest upon air
and air sustains them,
so would I learn to attain
freefall and float
into Creator Spirit's embrace
knowing no effort earns
that all-surrounding grace.
Learning to "attain freefall and float" is sometimes a big ask. It requires faith which sometimes comes hard. Such trust requires the courage to risk it all, which seems beyond us when the inner self is feeling defensive and self-protective. Somewhere in the emotional and spirtitual anatomy of faith there is the fusion of personal response and Divine Gift, or perhaps, personal response to Divine Gift. We are saved by grace through faith, which is the gift of God. Yet we are to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, while giving thanks that he who began a good work in us will bring it to completion.
It's an important pastoral insight, best learned by being pastorally sensitive to our own heart's longings, failures and fears, that being told to believe, to trust, to have faith, can be the hardest ask of all - and the hardest task of all. As well ask me to open a tin with a banana. In countless sermons, in many a praise song backed by enthusiastic singing, there can be a subtle but significant theological slippage that has far reaching spiritual consequences.
On what does my life depend? Where does faith come from? If it is all of grace, why does it seem so much depends on me believing, as if the flow of grace was through a tap I have to have the strength to turn on? And what if I don't have that strength?
Does my security depend on me holding on to God or God holding on to me?
Is it sinners receiving Christ or Christ receiving sinners that is of the esse of the Gospel.
Am I caught up into the Triune life of God, and held in the eternal security of a love that will not let me go, or does that depend on something I do, or give or think?
What I like about Levetov's lines, and why I quote them, is she understands (and later in her life came to understand with deep compassion born of her own suffering) is the last two lines.
Don't tell me to believe more. To trust more. To do this or that as if I wouldn't if I could, and if I knew what. To believe when my heart is wrung out of trust and I need to be held rather than take hold. Because it's that holding, that grace, that gift of Love Divine which as Julian says, enfolds us - it is that initiative of God, that perseverance, not of the saints but of God, whose untiring and inexhaustible grace as Levertov says bears, sustains and embraces, " and no effort earns that all-sustaining grace".
Just now and then in our lives, we come to the place where for all our uncertainties, we take the risk of saying to the God into whose life we are caught up in the love of the Father, the Grace of the Son and the communion of the Spirit, "Lord I believe - help my unbelief". The one reality that transcends thought and emotion, reason and the heart, and which persists as the truth that holds us even when we ourselves doubt it, is the spectacular assertion of Paul "Your life is hid with Christ in God".
We use the phrase a lot today, being 'in a hard place just now'. I guess we all know what it means. And that hard place can be a place where faith, trust, hopefulness, confidence, and courage require more than we are able to offer, just now. The hard place is the one that feels most real, determined by outer circumstance and inner anxiety. But the all sustaining grace perseveres, the untiring love does not weary, the life we live is surrounded and drawn into the eternal exchange of love and peace and joy - no we may not be aware of it, "our life is hid with Christ in God", and that depends not on my believing it, but on the love of Christ Crucified, the life of the Holy Spirit, and the sustaining mercy of the Father.
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