Surrender & Liminal Space
Released from the old…not quite settled into the new…welcome to the nebulous world of liminal space.
Do you feel this way? That you’ve emerged from an old story? An old plot twist that seemed to work itself out despite your efforts?
Maybe you feel that you haven’t quite landed firmly in new territory. You’re wandering. Unmoored.
Welcome to liminal reality.
An in-between place where the old story has been written and concluded but the new story hasn’t yet made itself manifest.
It seems that the whole world currently sits in liminal space. Covid hit and completely changed the rules here. It unveiled so much about what happens behind the scenes on this planet. For instance, we now know that a major portion of the medical industrial complex is just that…a business; with a model for profit. We also know that there is either a conscious or unconscious effort to divide people along psychological and tribal lines. Our social media and journalistic landscape has ushered in a hard left and a hard right sort of division that has broken up friendships, families, communities.
We know that we have become a globalized, corporatized world. We are cogs in a wheel for a machine that wants more of our time, attention and resources.
So here we are, the veil has been ripped off. We’re all aware and yet we’re not quite sure where to land yet. Those who have profited from the previous status quo will be hard-pressed to give up the old, but the old is crumbling.
The jig is up.
As an old world order crumbles, so too, will the individual set points that make up this big, beautiful world. After all, we can’t melt the pot without melting its ingredients. The whole thing must transform.
What has become crystal clear in the last several decades is that we the people are starving for an enchanted life again. We once had it. But it slowly disappeared with corporatization, technology, secularization.
It seems we no longer like the thought of walking around like zombies staring into the little screens that sit in our pockets all day long.
So where do we go from here?
If we were smart about this…if we really desired a fruitful and illuminated new way…we would step out of the way and allow it create itself. After all, the old way, in its power-hungry, sophomoric endeavours was what created the great divides, the endless, shallow scrolling, the denial of God, and the self as supreme.
The anxiety you feel is not the result of a life teetering on the edge of the unknown…it is the endless attempts at being the driver.
I can prove this to you.
Think of the times in your life where, despite your best efforts, life took you in a different direction. Think of something you desired to get, achieve, have…and when it didn’t happen…or when something entirely different happened…you were relieved.
You thanked God for the re-route.
I think back to when, at 26 years old, I had to have a life-changing surgery. It was something I had dreaded since I was a little girl. Leading up to this surgery, my life was going down a dark road. I was partying way too much. I was reckless. My wheels were spinning and I was calling this ‘freedom.’
This so-called freedom was really a railing against life; against myself. In my attempt to push back against all of the rules, I almost took myself out.
And then the rug was pulled out from underneath me. I was 26 years old, single and in the hospital, not having a clue how life would look on the other side.
I had landed deep into liminal space. What was so odd about this space for me was that I had nothing to hang onto anymore. Time felt weird. My body wasn’t the same. Who I knew myself to be up to that point was wiped away.
It was one of the strangest times in my life.
And then, seemingly out of nowhere, everything changed. My old boyfriend, the only guy who I had ever loved (who was in a serious relationship with his live-in girlfriend) came to visit me in the hospital. It felt like an out of body experience.
He came in to see me for the second time the next day before flying back home to his life. We hugged goodbye and as he walked out of my hospital room I started to cry. I laid in that hospital bed with a knowing so deep in my gut, it hit me like a ton of bricks.
I would marry him. I knew it in every fibre of my being.
I had no idea how this would come to be. We lived hours apart. He lived with his girlfriend. I had no clue where I was going.
But I knew.
A week after I got out of the hospital, he had broken up with his girlfriend and we were back together. Six months later, we were engaged. And less than a year after that, we were married.
Now, I couldn’t have planned all of that had I tried. In the deep surrender of that time in my twenties, life re-routed itself to the best possible place. Almost overnight, everything changed.
I want to offer you a similar lifeline.
To let God have you. To give yourself over. To make the grown up decision to surrender. Because that will always be the wisest path. To know that we don’t know. To put away your own plans.
Don Dolindo Ruotolo (1882-1970), an Italian Roman Catholic priest had the gift of prophesy, was known for his ‘spirituality of surrender’ and the Surrender Novena. This novena, based on Jesus's words given directly to him in a series of revelations, encourages a complete surrender to God's will and trust in Him to resolve difficulties.
It is a simple prayer, prayed every day for 9 days. Read the words slowly and see if you don’t feel immense relief through their sentiment. Trust that there is a better way for you waiting to weave itself into creation.
Not by your hand. This moment is asking you to RECEIVE. Here is the prayer.
The Surrender Novena
Day 1
Why do you confuse yourselves by worrying? Leave the care of your affairs to me and everything will be peaceful. I say to you in truth that every act of true, blind, complete surrender to me produces the effect that you desire and resolves all difficult situations.
Say 10 times: Oh Jesus, I surrender myself to you, take care of everything!
Mother, I am yours now and forever. Through you and with you, I always want to belong completely to Jesus.
Day 2
Surrender to me does not mean to fret, to be upset, or to lose hope, nor does it mean offering to me a worried prayer asking me to follow you and change your worry into prayer. It is against this surrender, deeply against it, to worry, to be nervous and to desire to think about the consequence of anything.
It is like the confusion that children feel when they ask their mother to see their needs, and then try to take care of those needs for themselves so that their childlike efforts get in their mother’s way. Surrender means to placidly close the eyes of the soul, to turn away from thoughts of tribulation and to put yourself in my care, so that only I act, saying, “You take care of it.”
Say 10 times: Oh Jesus, I surrender myself to you, take care of everything!
Mother, I am yours now and forever. Through you and with you, I always want to belong completely to Jesus.
Day 3
How many things I do when the soul, in so much spiritual and material need, turns to me, looks at me and says to me, “You take care of it,” then closes its eyes and rests. In pain you pray for me to act, but that I act in the way you want. You do not turn to me, instead, you want me to adapt your ideas. You are not sick people who ask the doctor how to. So do not act this way, but pray as I taught you in the Our Father: “Hallowed be thy Name,” that is, be glorified in my need. “Thy kingdom come,” that is, let all that is in us and in the world be in accord with your kingdom. “Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven,” that is, in our need, decide as you see fit for our temporal and eternal life. If you say to me truly: “Thy will be done,” which is the same as saying: “You take care of it,” I will intervene with all my omnipotence, and I will resolve the most difficult situations.
Say 10 times: Oh Jesus, I surrender myself to you, take care of everything!
Mother, I am yours now and forever. Through you and with you, I always want to belong completely to Jesus.
Day 4
You see evil growing instead of weakening? Do not worry. Close your eyes and say to me with faith: “Thy will be done, You take care of it.” I say to you that I will take care of it, and that I will intervene as does a doctor and I will accomplish miracles when they are needed. Do you see that the sick person is getting worse? Do not be upset, but close your eyes and say, “You take care of it.” I say to you that I will take care of it, and that there is no medicine more powerful than my loving intervention. By my love, I promise this to you.
Say 10 times: Oh Jesus, I surrender myself to you, take care of everything!
Mother, I am yours now and forever. Through you and with you, I always want to belong completely to Jesus.
Day 5
And then I must lead you on a path different from the one you see, I will prepare you; I will carry you in my arms; I will let you find yourself, like children who have fallen asleep in their mother’s arms, on the other bank of the river. What troubles you and hurts you immensely are your reason, your thoughts and worry, and your desire at all costs to deal with what afflicts you.
Say 10 times: Oh Jesus, I surrender myself to you, take care of everything!
Mother, I am yours now and forever. Through you and with you, I always want to belong completely to Jesus.
Day 6
You are sleepless; you want to judge everything, direct everything and see to everything and you surrender to human strength, or worse – to men themselves, trusting in their intervention – this is what hinders my words and my views. Oh, how much I wish from you this surrender, to help you; and how I suffer when I see you so agitated! Satan tries to do exactly this: to agitate you and to remove you from my protection and to throw you into the jaws of human initiative. So, trust only in me, rest in me, surrender to me in everything.
Say 10 times: Oh Jesus, I surrender myself to you, take care of everything!
Mother, I am yours now and forever. Through you and with you, I always want to belong completely to Jesus.
Day 7
I perform miracles in proportion to your full surrender to me and to your not thinking of yourselves. I sow treasure troves of graces when you are in deepest poverty. No person of reason, no thinker, has ever performed miracles, not even among the saints. He does divine works whosoever surrenders to God. So don’t think about it any more, because your mind is acute and for you it is very hard to see evil and to trust in me and to not think of yourself. Do this for all your needs, do this, all of you, and you will see great continual silent miracles. I will take care of things, I promise this to you.
Say 10 times: Oh Jesus, I surrender myself to you, take care of everything!
Mother, I am yours now and forever. Through you and with you, I always want to belong completely to Jesus.
Day 8
Close your eyes and let yourself be carried away on the flowing current of my grace; close your eyes and do not think of the present, turning your thoughts away from the future just as you would from temptation. Repose in me, believing in my goodness, and I promise you by my love that if you say, “You take care of it,” I will take care of it all; I will console you, liberate you and guide you.
Say 10 times: Oh Jesus, I surrender myself to you, take care of everything!
Mother, I am yours now and forever. Through you and with you, I always want to belong completely to Jesus.
Day 9
Pray always in readiness to surrender, and you will receive from it great peace and great rewards, even when I confer on you the grace of immolation, of repentance, and of love. Then what does suffering matter? It seems impossible to you? Close your eyes and say with all your soul, “Jesus, you take care of it.” Do not be afraid, I will take care of things and you will bless my name by humbling yourself. A thousand prayers cannot equal one single act of surrender, remember this well. There is no novena more effective than this.
Say 10 times: Oh Jesus, I surrender myself to you, take care of everything!
Mother, I am yours now and forever. Through you and with you, I always want to belong completely to Jesus.
Be willing to allow yourself to be shaped by something beyond yourself and your ideas of yourself. Your ideas are limited; God’s are unlimited.
We are in a moment on this planet, at this time. I know you feel it too. Let your best laid plans fall away to better ones.
Be brave and Surrender.