I Am the Lord’s

Memento Mori and the Freedom of No Longer Needing to Solve One’s Life

“If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.”

— Romans 14:8

There comes a point when even the desire to understand one’s life must be surrendered.

We spend so much of our existence trying to solve it.

We turn circumstances into problems. We turn other people into problems. Eventually, and perhaps most cruelly, we turn ourselves into problems.

Something must be resolved.

Something must be repaired.

Someone must change.

A decision must be reached.

The future must become clear.

And beneath all of this there can hide a strange presumption: that life is something given to us to manage rather than something given to us to offer.

I no longer want to live this way.

I do not want to calculate my remaining years. I do not want to arrange circumstances so carefully that uncertainty can no longer touch me. I do not want to spend what remains of my life constructing protections against what may or may not happen.

Nor do I want to feel controlled by circumstances, institutions, other people, their decisions, their approval or disapproval.

I want to belong to Christ.

Nothing more.

“If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord.”

Alive or dead, I am the Lord’s.

For many years St. John Climacus has been one of my great teachers in this. The Ladder taught me to recognize the passions, to see how subtly the heart clings—to possessions, praise, comfort, reputation, judgment, memory, resentment, even to its own sorrow.

But perhaps there is a more hidden attachment beneath them all.

Attachment to life as I imagine it should be.

Not merely attachment to pleasure within life, but attachment to a particular form of life.

To what I thought my vocation would look like.

To where I thought I would belong.

To the work I imagined I would continue.

To the relationships I thought would remain.

To the person I expected to be.

Even spiritual desires can become part of this imagined future. We can cling to the monastery. To solitude. To ministry. To recognition. To obscurity. To one ecclesiastical home rather than another. Even to the beautiful image of ourselves having finally surrendered everything.

The heart can possess its own renunciation.

Climacus will not permit this.

Memento mori.

Remember death.

Not morbidly.

Truthfully.

Death exposes the absurdity of our calculations.

The carefully defended identity will disappear.

The titles will disappear.

The arguments will disappear.

The explanations we desperately wanted others to understand will disappear.

The question of who was right will become very small.

The books will belong to others.

The room will be emptied.

Another person will eventually sleep beneath this roof.

And the name by which I have been known in this world will gradually become a memory.

But I will be the Lord’s.

This is why remembrance of death can become such profound freedom.

Death says:

You cannot keep any of this.

Christ says:

You do not need to.

There is an immense difference.

The first sounds like deprivation.

The second is freedom.

Perhaps the deepest detachment is not learning to live without possessions. It is learning to live without possessing life itself.

My life is not mine.

My future is not mine.

My vocation is not mine.

My remaining years are not mine.

Even tomorrow is not mine.

Everything is received.

Everything is offered.

Everything returns.

And therefore I do not have to solve myself.

What an extraordinary mercy that is.

I can finally stop standing outside my own life examining it, asking what must happen next for it to become acceptable.

I can simply inhabit the place God has given me today.

A room.

An icon.

A prayer rope.

Someone who needs to be cared for.

A tired body.

An uncertain future.

Christ.

Perhaps this is enough.

The Desert Fathers continually fled the illusion that salvation was somewhere else. The cell became their great teacher because eventually there was nowhere left to escape. No new circumstances to arrange. No new identity to acquire. No audience before whom to explain themselves.

Only God.

“Stay in your cell,” they said, “and your cell will teach you everything.”

Perhaps the cell ultimately teaches this:

Your life is not a problem to be solved.

Neither is the person beside you.

Neither are the circumstances God has permitted today.

Neither are you.

There may be things that require action. There may be injustice that must be addressed. Decisions will eventually have to be made. Responsibilities cannot be baptized as passivity.

But action is different from control.

Discernment is different from calculation.

Obedience is different from fear.

And surrender is very different from defeat.

Christ knew where He came from and where He was going, and therefore He could kneel and wash feet.

Perhaps freedom begins there.

Knowing where we belong.

Not knowing what happens next.

Knowing Whose we are.

Then the future loses its tyranny.

Let tomorrow come as it comes.

Let doors open.

Let doors remain closed.

Let others take whatever time they require.

Let what must end, end.

Let what God desires to remain, remain.

Let me neither grasp nor flee.

Let me not turn another person into the obstacle between myself and peace.

Let me not turn circumstances into enemies.

Let me not make myself into a project requiring endless repair.

Let me stand before You as I am.

Poor.

Empty-handed.

Unfinished.

Mortal.

Yours.

The remembrance of death strips away the fantasy that there will eventually come a moment when everything has been resolved and I can finally begin to live.

No.

This is my life.

This morning.

This breath.

This prayer.

This person before me.

This uncertainty.

This Cross.

And somewhere hidden within it all is the Kingdom.

Climacus taught me to fear attachment because attachment enslaves the heart.

But now perhaps the teaching goes deeper.

I must relinquish not merely attachment to the things of life.

I must relinquish attachment to what I imagine life itself ought to become.

I do not need the future I imagined.

I do not even need the future I presently desire.

I need Christ.

Let me love Him alone.

Let me hope in Him alone.

Let me trust Him alone.

Let me stop measuring whether my life has become what I thought it should become.

If I live, I am Yours.

If I die, I am Yours.

If I remain, I am Yours.

If I depart, I am Yours.

If I am remembered, I am Yours.

If I am forgotten, I am Yours.

If everything I have built remains, I am Yours.

If it disappears, I am Yours.

And when the final hour comes and everything that seemed so urgent has fallen silent, there will be no circumstances left to control, no future left to calculate, no identity left to preserve.

Only this:

I am the Lord’s.

Perhaps that is what I have been trying to learn all along.