by Miki Kashtan

(Below is an excerpt of the article that you can find on Medium)

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The word “hineni” comes from Hebrew, my very beloved first language. Its literal meaning is “I am here,” though it has much more gravitas than that translation or other ways in Hebrew to convey “I am here.” In its original biblical context, the word is usually said to God. Within that religious context, it signifies the willingness to follow and surrender to God’s will, and it’s usually taken to mean obedience. My own sense-making of the word arises from reflecting deeply on the difference between surrender and obedience. Perhaps one way of making sense of that difference is that surrender is the release of control whereas obedience is the giving up of freedom. If this intuitive understanding is even remotely accurate, then the gap amounts to the difference between following life based on trust and following external authority based on fear.

I have never obeyed anyone: not as a child in relation to parents, teachers, or anyone who demanded my obedience, and not as an adult in relation to states, laws, and police. And I have no interest in anyone obeying anyone else or me in the contexts in which I have taken on significant leadership. I cringe any time I sense any hint that someone is giving up their freedom in relation to anyone and especially in relation to me.

My relationship with surrender is a whole other matter. It took me decades before I could ever experience surrender as, indeed, distinct from giving up my freedom. The first time I found my way to surrendering was in 1994, at thirty-eight. What I surrendered to, at that time, was overwhelming despair of a kind that grabbed me periodically for months at a time. The surrender meant I wouldn’t try to climb my way out of the despair and, instead, accept that maybe this is my lot for the rest of my life. The result was grace, the likes of which I had never experienced before and rarely have since.

Full article to be read on Medium

PHOTO CREDIT

These collages and illustrations were created by Gwen Olton (@kooolgwen on instagram) and using images from unsplash.

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