An Advent Calendar for my Friends – December 5

CANO, Alonso: Saint John the Evangelist’s Vision of Jerusalem, 1636-37.
Oil on canvas, 83 x 44 cm, Wallace Collection, London

The Angel of Trust

by Anselm Grün

Again and again I hear the lament: “I cannot trust. As a child I never learned to trust blindly. My trust has been betrayed so often. Even if I really want to, I can’t manage to trust someone else.” People like that are and will remain lonely. They don’t dare to reach out for someone, because of their fear to be disappointed again. They also don’t trust in someone’s love. At once there are doubts: “He only loves me out of pity, or because he wants something from me, because he can use me for his own ends.” For people like that it will be of little help if I tell them, “You simply need to have faith.” They would like to have faith, but they can’t. The reason for this usually can be found in their childhood. And they could not choose that. One person has had the experience of the reliability of her parents from childhood onwards. Now she is able not only to trust her parents, but to meet other people with the same confidence. Yes, she has a basic confidence in life, in being, in God. That way she can chance life. She can even take on some risks, because she is supported by her faith that everything will okay.

When I wish you the Angel of Trust, then I trust that you will not be left with the distrust you have acquired as a child. You can learn trust. You can be student of the Angel of Trust. However, you can’t simply decide to be trusting right this minute. Trust needs to grow. There is a need for positive experiences of other people who prove themselves to be trusty and trustworthy. But it also requires your willingness to trust trust. If you watch your boyfriend or girlfriend with your distrustful eyes, they have no chance to prove their trustworthiness to you. You will interpret everything they say or do in a negative way. You have at least to try to trust. You ask how that’s possible? You can pretend that there is trust. You can conduct the experiment of how you feel if you simply believe everything your friend tells you, if you trust him or her blindly. Of course doubts will sneak back into your trust again. But first, try for at least a week to trust your friend. You will see that this feels good and how you are more and more proven right to trust him or her.

Of course there is always a risk involved if you trust. You don’t have a guarantee that your trust is justified. What helps me with that is that I feel supported in a deeper sense. I feel myself supported by a higher power. Even if a person abuses my trust, I can still place my trust in God Who holds me in His good hands. This trust in God keeps me from falling into the abyss of depression, if a person abuses my trust.

Forever people have trusted in guardian angels accompanying them. They have called on these guardian angels not only in the traffic on the streets, but whenever they were afraid that their trust could be abused, whenever they were in doubt if they should trust someone. I wish that you may forever be surrounded by the Angel of Trust. Then you don’t need to be 100% certain if you can really trust a particular person right this moment or not. You don’t lose trust even if someone disappoints you. The Angel of Trust will stay with you and will boost your confidence again to trust yourself and to risk trusting other people as well. Because that’s what trust is all about after all: it’s not about something I can control.

Because taking chances is inescapably linked with having faith, it’s good to know that there is an Angel of Trust around me. The angel is in contact with that which is beyond my control. At a deeper level he gives me the confidence I need to trust people. He leads me to a kind of trust that can never be wholly destroyed by people because it is also beyond their control.

This trust gives me the liberty to trustingly meet others. And it enables me to chance life, to take a risk. “No risk, no gain,” according to a proverb. Who wants to control the success of everything she attempts, will miss out on life. The Angel of Trust wants to introduce you more and more to trusting life and trusting people. You will see that you are not chained to the brittle kind of trust you have learned as a child. There’s angel who wants to place your trust on solid ground, on a ground on which you can build your life.

© by Anselm Grün, 50 Engel für das Jahr, 1997;
translation by JunoMagic

Song for December 5:

(Click pic!)

Vertrauen (“Trust”)
by Hans-Jürgen Hufeisen,
album “Gold, Weihrauch und Flöte” (“Gold, Incense and Flute”)