Letting Go

Dear Friends,

This week I noticed a common theme the readings assigned for our today’s worship – letting go. In our Old Testament reading, God tells Abram to head out into the land of Canaan at the age of 75, leaving his home, his people, and his familiar life behind. In the Gospel, Jesus tells a tax collector named Matthew, “follow me” and Matthew does. He walks right of the booth where he’s been conducting his life’s business, for good.

Letting go, it seems, is what the life-long journey with God is all about. As I get older, this has become more of a reality than a concept; it’s a way of looking at life. Age either shuts us down or wises us up. And I’d like to think the latter is true for me, and for you, however “aged’ you may be.

With this in mind, I offer you this week’s meditation by pastor/poet Steve Garnaas-Holmes:

Growing old tutors us in what Jesus taught.

To let go, to let go.

To surrender things, control,

the power to make things as you wish.

To rely, and be grateful.

To know the blessing hidden in being

poor in spirit, with diminished powers,

trusting a greater power, unseen;

to be meek, unlikely to outgun the strong,

and know what you have;

to know mourning, and the comfort that outlives grief;

to hunger for a world

yet to come into its righteousness—

hunger that is strength.

And the blessing that endures. It endures.

To let pain be a teacher and weakness a coach

and failure a school that never lets out.

To leave your works for your heart.

To forgive yourself and others as one.

To renounce what anybody thinks of you.

To be able to see the long story of love,

how it has shadowed you.

To have found a center reliant on nothing

but the everlasting.

To know that your legacy shall be unknown;

that loveliness is not in your face but behind it;

that beyond the Mystery

all is gathered in capable arms;

that all is grace.

To know that when you have lost everything,

when there is nothing left of you

you are still you,

strong and beautiful, worthy and beloved.

And how to see that when others don't.

To let go, and to let go.

And to trust that if you have loved

you have lived.* 

In Christ,

Amelie+

*Steve Garnaas-Holmes, Unfolding Light, https://unfoldinglight.net/2023/06/