The Victory of Surrender by Kristyn Komarnicki My mother-in-law is dying of cancer right now. In a small clinic in southern central France, she is awaiting her final day on earth with grace and calm. We watch from afar, have visited to see goodbye as we were able, and dread the phone call we know will come any day. Three years ago, my own mother lay dying, also from cancer. As I sat by her bedside, I worked to put the finishing touches on a PRISM issue that included major features about the situation in Israel/Palestine. I guess history really does repeat itself, because the latest issue of PRISM also focuses on the Middle East, and again I am waiting for a dear woman in my life to breathe her last. There is something about the poignancy of dying in spring that resonates well with the Israel/ Palestine story. Here is what I wrote the three years ago, as I waited and watched by my mother’s side: I am sitting in a spacious, light-filled room in a quiet suburb of Philadelphia. Cardinals flash their scarlet robes against the snow as they feast at the bird feeder just beyond the glass. All is peace and tranquility and beauty. No scene could contrast more sharply with the rubble and mayhem of battle-worn Palestine, half a world away. And yet, like the Palestinians and the Israelis, I am engulfed in grief. I am keeping watch at my mother’s bedside as she slips every day further into the clutches of an incurable cancer. On the other side of this suffering lies her heavenly home, a place of health and wholeness, and for that I rejoice. Indeed it is the only thing that makes her departure not only bearable but also, in some mysterious way, beautiful. While preparing two features on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Peace Fighters and Liberating the Oppressor, I have felt a deep connection to the people’s suffering in that part of the world. Over the past few weeks, the stories of apartheid, harassment, retaliation, and escalation have merged in my mind with the frightening indignities and seemingly random violence my mother is enduring at the hands of her own enemy. Just like the Palestinian and Israeli activists who have chosen to confront the hostility nonviolently, my mother has chosen to absorb the blows of her disease rather than take aggressive and futile measures against it. I am using this imperfect metaphor to help make sense of the painful journey my family currently finds itself on, as well as to help me understand the mystery of nonviolent activism as embodied in the Palestinians.
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For a mystery it is. While I long to exhibit the meek power that Jesus personified, I struggle with my temper. While I promote pacifism, I know the violence that even a passion for justice can rile within me. As one of writers, Robert Hirschfield, who has interviewed dozens of nonviolent activists over the years, says, “I see how violently I react to violence. It shows me how far I am from the nonviolence I write about.” Like the Palestinian populace who stoop beneath forces beyond their control, my mother is realistic about the power of her tormentor and candid about the cost of its domination of her. But instead of resisting it, she has decided to swim with its forceful current. This is not weakness or cowardice—on the contrary, it is the ultimate act of courage and strength, for in turning the other cheek she is choosing the strength of God over that of man, and in doing so, she continues to teach me about life, love, and grace, just as she did when I sat on her knee as a child. I am learning most of all about the power of surrender. Not surrender to an unworthy foe—such as a government or a disease—but surrender to our Lord, our creator and savior, the master craftsman who will use whatever materials we offer up to him—our flesh, our disease, our broken hearts—to create something of beauty with which to glorify himself. When we surrender to Christ, we know victory, no matter what happens to us. It has struck me, as I’ve learned about the peaceful attempts of these activists— humble but earnest efforts that can rarely rise above the din of Israeli forces/Hamas responses/terrorist measures and therefore seldom register on the recording instruments of the media—that a perfect plan for reconciliation already exists. An ancient but living document—the Word Made Flesh—provides the solution for Muslims and Jews, Palestinians and Israelis to live together in peace. If they could all learn a lesson from my dear mother, who spent her whole life pouring herself out as a love offering to Jesus and who is now, though beleaguered on all sides, spilling light as she walks the final path to eternity, they too could know perfect peace in that war-torn land. As my father has long asserted, “Christ is the missing link—you won’t find God in the fossil record. You can only find him in the face of Jesus.” Perhaps nowhere does this truth resonate more than in the Middle East today. Christ is indeed the missing link, the bridge between law and liberty, between Jew and Muslim, between every Israeli and Palestinian who will call on the Prince of Peace. Learn more about peace in Israel/Palestine: ESA’s Public Policy campaign for peace in Israel/Palestine Israel/Palestine PRISM archives Learn more about dying: The Art of Dying: Living Fully into the Life to Come by Rob Moll (InterVarsity Press, 2010)
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What People Talk about Before They Die by Kerry Egan, a hospice chaplain in Massachusetts and the author of Fumbling: A Pilgrimage Tale of Love, Grief, and Spiritual Renewal on the Camino de Santiago (Doubleday, 2004)
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