Letting Go

Sometimes you come across something which cuts through life and gives you a fresh way of seeing. For me, recently, it was whilst reading Esther de Waal’s, Living with Contradiction (pg.67-68) in which she quoted John Austin Baker, who said:

The way to find fulfilment of the personality is not to escape from pain by refusing to love (which is suicide) or to love and possess what we love (which is self-centredness) but to love passionately with mind, heart and soul and then to endure the pain of letting go.

This pulled me up short.

Such sentiments appear to be inhuman, surely union of those who are in love is what God has ordained in nature? Love seeks out the beloved, seeks out their presence, delights in it. What does it look like to let go of what we love? And why would God want that from us?

One of the most obvious ways is when someone we love dies. Their absence is forced upon us of course, but somewhere in the grieving process there is inevitably a need to let them go, to give them up, to accept their absence as real and non-negotiable. The gift of their presence, was indeed a gift, given for a time, but not for ever. Trying to hold on to them, however understandable, is futile and in the end counter-productive.

Mutability is at the heart of human existence, yet it is profoundly difficult to come to terms with. Comfort zones, stability, possession, security, these are some of the states that as humans we crave – to know who we are and what we are, to know who we love and that we have them, to know we are loved and held, to be without fear and secure. Yet to be ‘safe’ is to learn to live in the knowledge that all these things are transient and impossible to hold on to. We are given others for a time, but we can never own them. We give birth (in the widest sense), nurture, teach, love, and then set free.

Celibacy is hard to explain to people and is often looked on with great suspicion, but it is to do with this inner ethic of Christianity which is about freedom and gift. Celibacy is a life that requires a profound ability to love and let go, yet at its heart is a discipline that we all need to develop if we are to live happily. For instance, monogamy requires an exclusive love for just one other person, which is not an easy practice either – for in our lives, as our mutable nature will attest, we will grow and change, develop, need others, love others and therefore be similarly challenged by the discipline of letting go.

There are many other states of life of course and in their own ways this discipline will be required. Perhaps it will be the letting go of what might have been: a person who never marries or has the children they wanted; for another, to let go of their idea of what a good life is because they get divorced against their own expectations and values; or, the need to let go of prejudice: a father who has to come to terms with the fact that his son is gay, for instance. The final letting go is necessarily that of our own death, one which we must prepare for spiritually if we are able.  But to resist and fight it is to suffer more.

At the centre of Jesus’ witness to his Father was his willingness to give up his life. To sacrifice is to deliberately ‘let go’ of something in order that something better might emerge in its place. It requires strength of will and commitment, courage and steadfastness. It was something that Jesus kept on doing – not only dying, but then returning only to leave again.

Nevertheless, I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.
                                                                                                                                       John 16.7

Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them: ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.                                                                                                              John 20. 17

Mary’s task was to spread the message about Jesus – she couldn’t simply hold on to him for herself. Jesus was to be given to the world in a new and transforming way, that meant it was inevitable and necessary that he leave. Jesus is re-gifted to the world through the sacraments – his body broken and shared in Communion in a way that is totally transformative and a never-ending gift.

In Jesus we see a man fully human, and yet fully divine. On the cross, he gives up his human sonship in order that he might completely fulfil his divine sonship. For those around him there was inevitably a cost, a deep loss, a need to let him go. For his mother, Mary Magdalene, and those who cared for him, this letting go was profound and painful. It is the women who loved Jesus that come to the fore at the point on his journey of deepest sacrifice and most profound miracle.

If I have the courage to let go of the person I love I believe that we shall find one another again on a level we could never have imagined.

Baron Von Hugel, Living in Contradiction, page 37

It is through a continuing engagement with the story of God’s love in Jesus that we can understand, just a little more each day, what God’s love is like.  We know through our shared Biblical heritage that the requirements of divine love are necessarily challenging. But, to accept that loving deeply and passionately is good, whilst at the same time resisting the corresponding desire to possess, our human experience can be transfigured.