In Yoke

I let go my desire for security and survival. I let go my desire for esteem and affection. I let go my desire for power and control. I let go my desire to change the situation. As I walk this journey, in Christ, and seek to yield more and more of my will to His will, I find this unvarying litany returns to my consciousness on a regular basis. This is one of the ways he is teaching me to apply his life to my life, to envelop my life with the qualities of His Life. The “paradox of letting go” is a sacred alchemy. It seems that all the sinfulness and impurity in my life comes from my striving for power/control, esteem/affection, security/survival. I must decrease, while he must increase. This is true wisdom-the journey’s joy, the journey’s energies, are to come from His abundance, not from my own will’s striving. “Not my will but Thine be done”, and “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” These are Yeshua’s prayers, and indeed, I pray, are...

My life is an indivisible whole, and all my attitudes run into one another; and they all have their rise in my insatiable love for mankind.        ---Mahatma Gandhi We should be able to make all sorts of graceful concessions on things that do not matter in life and yet stand unshakable on essentials.  To do this, we have to be detached from our opinions. I'm not recommending that we be wishy-washy, or lack strength in our convictions, but that we cultivate the forbearance not to force our opinions on others. When we have strength of conviction we will not get rattled when people question or contradict us. Mahatma Gandhi, for example, was not in favor of tea or coffee, but he would make a cup of tea for his wife each morning just the way she liked it.  This is bending gracefully on nonessentials. When it came to essentials, however, Gandhi was unshakable. His dedication to nonviolence was so absolute that he would abruptly call off a successful nationwide program of noncooperation w...