When We Give Up Our Lives

One of the monks at Holy Cross Monastery was telling me about his work with an Episcopal parish in the eastern U.S. He had worked with members to deepen the parish’s spirituality and reflect on its future. I can imagine hundreds of churches needing this kind of help, and I asked him if he ever thought about offering his services elsewhere. “No,” he replied with a smile, “because then I would no longer be a Benedictine.”

He’s right. As part of their vows, the Holy Cross monks pledge themselves to the Benedictine value of a balanced life. This means, in essence, that they must refrain from taking on too much because they have given up their lives to something else, something larger than themselves.

But this “living for something else” isn’t just for monks. It’s really for all of us who seek God. And it can be quite the countercultural adventure.

In what way? Well, a life lived for something else runs us afoul of many cultural expectations. Take the simple idea that if you do something well, you should do more of it. That makes for an excellent business strategy and a solid path to career success. But what if your “something else” pushes back? If you have vowed to live a balanced life, as our monk in the example above, you can’t always do more, no matter how well you do it.

Or consider the value of planning. “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail” goes the old maxim. Every company worth its salt has charted out where it wants to be in one year, three year, five years. But what if your “something else” pushes back? You can plan all you want, but God may steer you otherwise. In our “something else,” we have another—larger—consideration, and it may take us in directions we don’t fully understand. No wonder Jesus said of the Divine Spirit, “The wind blows where it will, and you can hear the sound of it, but do not know from whence it comes or where it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8).

Five years ago, I was passionate about my advertising career and happy to keep expanding it according to plan. But when I became an associate at Holy Cross—essentially pledging myself more fully to God—it dislodged the underpinnings of my life and raised a whole host of questions. Now I’m focusing a large chunk of my time on writing about spirituality, when that vocation may net me no income at all.

So why on earth engage “something else” if it’s so danged disruptive? Because a life out of our hands, and in the hands of the Divine, is much richer for us and more valuable for the world. By giving up control, we can let go our fears and vested interests and sacred cows—the things that often hold us back from becoming fully ourselves. We begin to realize that it’s not about me, but about we—which frees us to love others with abandon and serve them without regard for self-interest. By connecting with the Divine, we live in relationship with the Source of our lives, the Source of extravagant love.

It is an adventure. It rarely moves forward in a straight line. But travel that road far enough, and it’s hard to go back—because everything else pales by comparison.