Let It Go
Change is on my heart. Or maybe upheaval is more like it, if not for the negative connotation that can hold. Every day is peppered with something new: climate, locations, people. It’s all been wonderful – and I continue to be grateful for the generosity and patience of your welcome – but it’s also all new.
The journey of our faith is packed with change, not least because we’re promised something closer to adventure than a particular destination. When Jesus’ disciples, devastated and overwhelmed, asked for the destination to meet him, he told them: if you know me, you know how to get there. “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14.6a).
Cool, Jesus. Cool. But… where? We’ve got GPS now. Could you just tell us where and we’ll make our own ways?
I wonder how often I’ve been oblivious of a journey, how much I’ve missed, relying entirely on Google Maps to tell me when and where to turn. Or how often I’ve presumed to know the destination or the goal, and found a way there that didn’t look a lot like Jesus.
Maybe the only thing harder than change is not knowing precisely where we’re headed. But we have been taught the way. I share that not to express or invite confusion, but because I continue to wrestle with the slow progress of change, the journey towards something I don’t fully know. I know it’s true, and I know it’s not easy.
As I’ve wrestled, a poem came to mind for me, and I offer it here for our consideration. e e cummings is a favorite poet of mine, and this poem – “let it go – the” – is one that often speaks to me.
let it go – the
smashed word broken
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise – let it go it
was sworn to
go
let them go – the
truthful liars and
the false fair friends
and the boths and
neithers – you must let them go they
were born
to go
let all go – the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things – let all go
dear
so comes love
I’m no connoisseur of poetry, but that last line hits so hard. It’s so surprising, and yet promising. Just when I think cummings might be suggesting I can go full introverted hermit, just when I think “yeah, I can do this alone!”, he reminds us that letting go brings us to love. That many things we believe we need, or what we hold on to are in the way of love, of richer relationships. Are in the way of the way.
Every day, and seemingly especially in seasons of challenge and change, as we face an unknown destination, I pray we can seek above all the way, the truth, and the life that is Jesus. Or, as one more titan of literature, Flannery O’Connor, prayed in her journal, “I do not know you God because I am in the way. Please help me to push myself aside.” Amen.
Rev. Ben Richards
