Surprise!

There are many names for God: Father/Mother, Creator, Love, Yahweh, Presence. It’s a long list. But let’s add one more from the writing of Brother David Steindl-Rast: “Another name for God is surprise.” Encounters with God are usually unexpected. You’re going about your business: parenting, working, reading a book and without warning, God pulls back the curtain and says “Boo!” Usually the result of a “Boo!” experience is a change of mind or heart or life direction. And the change is always for the better.

Since I’m in a quoting mood, here’s one more, and it relates to the topic of surprise. “It seems that any moment of interest or pain or adversity can surprise us into the larger totality of life, breaking our current limits and allowing us to redefine ourselves in regard to the larger sense that is upon us.” You open the front door and there stands your long-alienated child, and you are surprised into joyful forgiveness. The letter you just opened tells you about the death of a very close friend and you are surprised into a deep awareness of what it means to be a friend and to lose one. Both experiences bring the potential for life change.

If you are about to say: Well, I never get surprises that have the potential to change my life, my response will be: You’re not paying attention. Wake up!”

So, find a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed for thirty-minutes. Put pencil to paper and make a list, short or long, of the times in your life when surprise (Surprise) happened, good surprise or bad, that changed the direction of your life, or as Mark Nepo says: “allowing us to redefine ourselves.”

Have you ever been surprised by Surprise? Of course you have.

**Both quotes from: The Book of Awakening, Mark Nepo, pp. 132-133, Red Wheel Press, 2020