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borrowed time
Letting Go
Lent is all about losing control. We like to be in the driver seat and when we're not, we feel ill at ease. We simply do not trust the other person to do as good a job as we can.
Lent is also about letting go, the ability to live in process, in the act of becoming new each moment, in awaiting with surprise the unfolding of each day.
Letting go and losing control are the conditions for transformation of any sort and, of course, for love. The seed must be broken down, it must give in to the titanic forces of nature in order to produce. The grub worm must let go of one life to become the incredibly beautiful butterfly. The Lord of life needed to die in order to experience his new glorified existence.
To let go and lose control takes patience, trust, a sense of waiting with eager anticipation and yet it is not without a degree of terror. This Lent means letting go entirely in the face of mystery in our lives and trusting the direction of God to create a new world for us.
Look at what you are and have now and then see what you can become and have. There is no comparison. As the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins said,
"Having the infinitely great
Therewith to hanker for the small!"
Who would be so stupid? Or as another Catholic poet, Francis Thompson, said,
"Yet was I sore adread
Lest having Thee, I have nought beside."
What's the point of worldly toys when one has heavenly treasures at one's fingertips? What paltry beings you and I are now, what inconsequential things you and I have now, pall in the face of what God has prepared for us.
Lent means losing control and coming to your senses, letting go and
letting God. It just needs to be tried.
St. Peter's Church in-the-Loop
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