Letting Go

Seems like we always have plenty of things that tie us in knots, imprison us, keep us from being free to love and be loved.

Lately I’ve been struggling with some changes in the Catholic Church. They’re really fairly minor: some of the ecclesiastical powers have decided we need our ritual language to be more poetic but also more pompous, more true to the original Latin translations but less relevant and real to our lives in the 21st Century. I spent most of Saturday at a workshop listening to all the explanations for this. I sat there simmering, thinking only that there are so many more important issues for the Church to deal with and that I would have to be learning a bunch of new Mass settings in addition to the new responses that will take effect this Advent. I was so frustrated and angry I was considering leaving my parish and the larger Catholic Church.

This morning our homilist talked about detachment and freedom. I realized immediately that my negative emotional reaction to the changes is something I need to let go of. God will not let a few little changes in liturgy and music come between us, so why should I allow that to happen? It’s my reactions to it that create the fissure. I get caught up in self-righteous anger and ownership of things that are comfortable for me. I see the sleight-of-hand happening in Rome that keeps our energies focused away from the real problems, and I allow that to really get to me. I know we are being worked and we can’t do a thing about it.

But God is in none of that, and my relationship to God doesn’t have to be, either. Rather, I can do as I see so many people who are upset about this doing – bow my head, accept, let go and move on. Try to find the gift in it, and trust that God will use this, too, as an instrument of grace.

OR, I can decide whether my lifelong membership in the Catholic Church is itself an attachment that keeps me from freely being the person God made me to be, from abandoning myself completely into God’s arms. Looking out at my congregation today it occurred to me that they are all an important part of my journey and part of my lesson. It is not yet time to turn my back on that connection. Perhaps some day it will be, but not now.

This afternoon I decided to give Charlie a bath. He was getting very smelly from too many weeks without one. My son Karl, grandson Jesse and I filled the wading pool with warm water. Charlie stoically stood while I soaped him up then rinsed him off. He loves water – wading in it and swimming in it. But baths are another matter. He tolerates them. Even with his boy Jesse helping (as much as a three-year-old can help), Charlie badly wanted to get out of the pool. But he stuck it out, he accepted the unpleasant parts of having water poured over him.

Afterwards, as I was drying him, he became very playful and exuberant, wild with joy. Was that because the bath was over, or because he was getting so much attention, or because so much dirt and hair had been washed away, making him feel free? Probably some of all three, but the idea of washing away the dirt and excess hair hit home: getting rid of “stuff” that weighs us down, restricts us, creates burdens in our lives.

It reminded me of a video I saw recently where a team of whale scientists freed a young humpback whale that had been badly tangled in fishing nets in the Sea of Cortez. She was nearly drowning because her fins and tail flukes were so entangled. They were able to slowly free her and when she swam away, her joyful exuberance was exhibited in countless leaps and breaches. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6pKX3whms8

Oh how wonderful it can feel to lose the ties that bind us, the attachments that hold us and can eventually drown us! Sometimes cutting those ties can be difficult and take much time and perseverance. Sometimes we have to be patient and stoic and put up with unpleasant initial experiences. But the rewards can be amazing.

Just let it go. Feel the freedom.