Letting go - 4 May 2012

One of the primary rhythms of all contemplative life and prayer is that we are, perhaps imperceptively, relinquishing our hold on possessions and on other people. We are losing the need to personally control life and events and the future, a control which was in any case mainly illusory. Every time we choose the stillness and the silence, in preference to everything else we could be doing and thinking and planning, we are creating a space, what Greek scripture calls a kairos (καιρος), a special time, in which the processes of letting go are gently applied. Buddhists understand this quite well. Ideally you arrive at the end of life with nothing. Well, we are not in that tradition, but we gather truth where we find it. Jesus taught clearly that possessions can be a problem. He showed clearly that it is fear, not sin, that is the underlying problem. Fear that we might lose what we own and control… Fear of the future… Fear of mortality and death… He showed that it is love that is the antidote of fear – abide in my love, he says. But the relinquishment is more radical and more subtle than we expect. Over the years, and over the days and weeks of meditation, we find that it is not so much that we are relinquishing anything – more that things are being taken away from us, gently and almost imperceptively. Typically we see it happening in retrospect. It is the work of the Holy Spirit, and it is always like the wind, unpredictable and strange, and surprising. I came upon a moving example just recently. Leonard Cohen, the now elderly singer and poet, and his poem about letting go: “Going home”: Going home without my sorrow Going home some time tomorrow Going home to where it’s better than before. Going home without my burden, Going home behind the curtain, Going home without the costume that I wore… We are letting go of attitudes, of poisonous memories, of remembered guilts… steadily, and day by day. We are conforming to Christ, by being still.