I was pondering one of Robert Louis Stevenson’s fables, “Faith, Half Faith and No Faith at All,” and something became clear to me about commitment. Or maybe I was pondering commitment and something became clear to me about Stevenson’s fable. My mind does not move in straight lines, and it never has. More like spirals moving up and down.

Nothing new, perhaps, yet I clearly saw this: A real commitment is unconditional. No loopholes, no circumstances that allow you to take it back. If there were any conditions lurking in the shadows when you made it, then it never was a real commitment. Or (a little sliver of light) won’t be until you let those conditionals go without reservation. The point is that this is where the real power of commitment lies. Because a commitment is unconditional, just the act of saying “Yes!” to one begins to free us from the bindings of our own conditioning. A commitment loosens the constraints we live under, and sometimes in the most unexpected ways. Commitment lifts you up to another world.

As an afterthought, many of us often feel weighed down by our various obligations. If, in the sense I have outlined above, we committed to our obligations, what might follow? If that time is ever to come for us, like the old rover, are we ready to go “off to die with Odin?”

iphone photo: frank m sheldon. outside freemont abbey, jan. 2010

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