Say Yes

SAY YES

“I don’t know Who – or what – put the question. I don’t know when it was put. I don’t even remember answering.  But at some moment, I did answer Yes to Someone – or Something – and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that my life, in self-surrender, had a goal.”

     I don’t know whether it was prior to or after he was named Secretary General of the United Nations, but this entry in Swedish diplomat Dag Hammarskjold’s journal was, despite the vagueness of details as to Who or what, Someone or Something, an obvious turning point in his life. He was never the same after saying “Yes.”

     Hammarskjold’s experience makes me wonder whether there isn’t a “Someone” or “Something” in all of us inviting us to surrender the control we think we have over the direction of our lives. As we meander through the days and years of our existence, many of us tend to imagine that we are the final arbiters of our life, the ultimate authority, the one and only determiners of who we are, where we are going, and how we’ll end up.

     It came as a surprise to Hammarskjold that there was a spiritual Presence within/without that had something in mind for him. Not necessarily something tangible, not a specific role he was to play, but a more general and personal relationship to which he could give himself.  Perhaps this is a different way to understand the traditional notion of “God’s will;” not a divine plan, not an agenda we must discern and to which we must comply, but a sacred, benevolent summons to intimacy with the God of our understanding. We have the freedom to turn a deaf ear to this invitation if we sense it at all, but to say “Yes” to this Someone/Something every day is an act of faith that can be the first step toward a new and more liberating life.