Gelassenheit
Gelassenheit. (Achoo?) It is a german word that means something like ‘surrender’ or ‘the quality of having let-go,’ and translated freely as ‘yielded-ness’, or maybe just ‘yielding.’
As a practical value and spiritual guidepost, ‘Gelassenheit’ expresses a central attitude of persons and communities that practice the imitation and following of Christ by yielding.
Many Christians often pray the words “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.” The prayer might be interpreted as a Gelassenheit-query to oneself:
How does God invite me to yield here and now?
How can my limited self, will and desire move with the proper flow of what the goodness of God desires in the life of the world near me?
Rather than always felt as a sense of duty, guilt, or burden, the holy obedience of yielding might be found in a sense of ease, deep calling, joy, expansiveness, connection, and profound gratitude.
Along with simple prayers and listening to others, I find that working with the materials of the earth, which seem to have their own inherent wisdom to learn and follow, teaches this attitude of yielding, of Gelassenheit.
‘Gelassenheit,’ and similar attitudes of surrender, can be found throughout christian traditions. ‘Gelassenheit’ specifically appears in the works Meister Eckhart, Heinrich Suso, and the shoemaker of Goerlitz, Jacob Boehme.
Certain anabaptist and pietist groups have cultivated a communal attitude of Gelassenheit. The sociologist Donald Kraybill describes ‘Gelassenheit’ among old-order anabaptist groups as a disposition that ties into a number of values and practices with a bias toward communal harmony, conflict avoidance, peaceableness, simplicity and other related values and virtues that emerge from a practice of following Christ daily.
None of these get very far in many segments of American society. Just look at the trucks and SUVs we drive-they scream “get out of my way!” And more examples could be adduced!
‘Yielding’ might be seen as a bias toward ways of life that tend toward active peacemaking, and include the wise deployment of conflict avoidance, accommodation and compromise, forgiving and asking forgiveness, trying hard not to shift blame or scapegoat or ride emotional frenzies, generating options in order to find a new way out of stuck polarities, and others practical skills for reconciliation.
Yielding to God, to the energies of new life within and among you, to your neighbors in love, seems central to christian faith and living. And that includes a willingness to yield in some conflicts, fights, hot and cold wars, and daily efforts where our purposes, senses of strength, and false selves meet frustration.
What would Gelassenheit and its practice look like in society, or american churches where it has not historically been a shaping value? Who will start the yielding?
Simon Bening, The Arrest of Christ, ca. 1525-30, Getty Center, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The widely known ‘Serenity Prayer’ is something I see as a contemporary version of Gelassenheit. It is prayed and lived by many people as they endure daily anxieties, sufferings and addictions. It is a source of comfort and courage to many people, churchgoers or not, who know all too well how much they cannot change, and also desire to live more fully and lovingly today.
R. Niebuhr wrote the prayer amidst the second world war, a time of grave evil, mass violence, and for most, just war on the part of the Allied powers. As a pastor he wrote it for others and for himself.
The prayer asks for ‘serenity.’ A german translation of the 1960s carefully decided upon the word ‘Gelassenheit’ to render the English ‘serentity.’ Interestingly, the pseudonym ‘Friedrich Christoph Oettinger’ was chosen (thus leading to some confusion about the source of the prayer), an 18th century Lutheran theologian and pietist, as well as theosopher in the tradition of Jacob Boehme. I don’t know if the translators knew that.
The prayer asks for Gelassenheit.
Yielding-to courage for action, to quiet and non-action. Yielding to the wisdom to see reality, accept with greater understanding a situation, what is called for in it, and your own abilities and limits to change some aspect that calls you to work at it.
The prayer asks for wisdom.
Anyway, I’ve got to wind this up and go edge-glue some boards. I have a a table to get ready and try to sell. Even warped boards can remind a person that a wisdom of life is available to draw near and from which to learn to yield under an easier yoke.