Letting Go Impermanently

We are nearing the end of another year. 2012 will soon be over and we will move onto 2013. It has certainly been an interesting year; so full of moments of absolute joy and bliss and some darker ones too, much like every year, every day, every moment. Life truly is awry, as 2012 has proved once again.

As 2012 comes to a close it is important to prepare ourselves for what 2013 will bring.We must let go of at least some of the old, so that we can let in the new. By the way I am not suggesting that we let go of treasured and beautiful memories, no not at all, I am just saying that now is the time to make room for the new. Who knows what the next twelve months have to offer.

Four weeks ago, at the beginning of Advent, I asked the congregations I serve to prepare themselves for the hopes and dreams for either themselves  their families, their communities, for the whole of humanity. I asked them to envision these hopes at the start of Advent and to spend the next four weeks preparing themselves for 2013, so that they can begin to make those hopes and dreams a reality, come the New Year. It will be interesting to see where this takes us all come the end of 2013.

Now of course throughout our lives we are always letting go and moving on. The truth is that we let go of things every single day. We are always letting go of something, in order to make room for what is right there in front of us. At some point or another we have to give up our childhoods in order to grow up and become adults. Now of course we do not let go of them completely, we always retain echoes of our childhood times. We let go of past struggles as we move on to new ones, although we hopefully do not let go of the lessons learnt from them. We let go of old relationships so that we can begin to connect deeply with new people. We do not always want to, I’m sure that we would like to hold on to some of them for all of our lives. Sometimes moving on is not a choice we make ourselves, but made by others for us. Moving on in life is not necessarily easy, but it is something that we have to do, in order to fully experience the present, the one and only true gift of life.

Mary Oliver said that:

To live in this world you must be able to do three things:

To love what is mortal;

To hold it against your bones

Knowing your own life depends upon it;

And when the time comes to let it go...

Life is impermanent and perhaps this is where it’s real beauty lies, but to love what is mortal is no easy task. Why? You may well ask. Well because fear gets in the way. We want to cling to what is mortal, because we do not want to lose it. This is such a human quality and I do not know anyone who does not do this. It is a part of this loving what is mortal. If you have held someone or something against your bones, as if your life depended upon it, it is no easy task to let it go.

But we must let go in order to experience what is here now, it is in life’s impermanence that the beauty lies. Would we appreciate what we had, if we knew it would last forever?

Think about the experiences that have moved you deeply this year. Surely part of their power was as a result of their impermanence? Maybe they moved us so deeply precisely because they do not last forever. Beauty whether it be human or natural; whether it be artistic or musical can never be sustained. Surely the nature of the beauty lies within its impermanence.

There is a story told of a jazz musician who went to that place where jazz musicians go when they exit this mortal coil. In this other place he met with instruments, the eternal presence of great jazz music. Well the instruments invited him to join them in a session. As he played on he thought to himself “this is heaven” As he played away he thought to himself “This is the greatest session that I’ve ever played, that’s ever been played.” They then began to play the arrangement again and this time they really jazzed it up with some cool improvisation and so it continued, on and on and on and on and on...After the 222nd playing and after every possible improvisation had been repeated, several times over, the musician called out to the other instruments “Hey man, when do we take a break?” to which the lead instrument replied, “Never man, never!”

And so they continued to play...

Even the most wonderful gift imaginable would soon lose its beauty if it was to last forever; it would soon become dull, monotonous, boring if it never ended. It is in the impermanence of life's moments that the real beauty lies. The same is true of the love we can create and give. We only have this moment in which to create and share the love we have; we only have this moment in which to shine.

Now please do not get me wrong I am not suggesting that in order to fully experience life we must let go of everything and live as an empty vessel. Actually I believe quite the opposite. There are some things that we must not only never let go of; there are some things that we need to learn to cling to. I adore the following words by my predecessor at Altrincham and Urmston Rev Celia Midgley titled “I do not let go”

“It is not for me, the emptying and the waiting.

I live in the world’s rush and tumble

Its passion and its strife

Its shouting and its joy.

I do not turn to pitying, solemn quietude.

My mind is with the greening spring

urgent with buds

with birdsong and with flowers.

I do not let go, I grasp and keep hold

of daily matter and yearly miracle

that flies and is lost

 that lingers and is loved."

“That flies and is lost that lingers and is loved” I particularly love those last two lines, they speak to me of what life, mortal life, is all about. 

That said 2012 is coming to an end and we do need to move on from it in order to open ourselves, to prepare ourselves, for what 2013 will bring. We must move forward, as the seasons move forward, toward a new birth, a new year; we must do this so that we can fully experience all that life has to offer to us.

So how do we discover what we must let go of and what we must hold on to? Well it begins with awareness. And to become aware of what needs to be let go of and what we needs to be held onto requires discernment;  we need to be able to discern, to sift out, what needs to be let go of, so that we do not continue playing the same tune over and over again. After all there are so many other tunes out there, just waiting to be discovered.

I love the etymology of words. Interestingly I bought a dear friend a book on the Etymology of words, as a Christmas present. I remember at the time thinking to myself how much I would love such a book. Well guess what? Another dear friend bought me the very same book as a Christmas gift. I just love these moments of connection, there is real magic always in the air.

Now the word discernment comes from the Latin “discernere” which means to separate, to distinguish, to sort out. Just think of prospectors panning for gold or sifting through rocks and dirt in search of gem stones. They are separating, they are sorting through the muck for what is precious, they are distinguishing, they are discerning.

I suspect that discernment is the key to awareness, to understanding what we need to let go of and what we need to hold on to. We need to discover what is of value and what needs to be discarded from our hearts, our minds and our lives. We need to do this in order to live fully and experience all that life has to offer. We need to discard the dirt and muck in order to discover all that is precious in life; we need to do this in order to be fully aware not only of our own lives, but the lives of those around us. This is no easy task and this is precisely why I suggested to the congregations I serve, at the beginning of advent, that we take time to prepare ourselves for the New Year; to prepare ourselves so that we could bring to life those wishes, whether for ourselves, those close to us, or the whole of humanity, to reality.

So how do we clear our minds so that we can discern, so that we can sift through the muck of life? Well I believe that we need to create space and we need silence. Our lives, our minds are so full of stuff that it is really difficult to discern what is right and healthy sometimes. This makes it difficult to make wise choices about life. In order to make those wise decisions we need to be still, we need to be silent, we need to connect to our bodies, to our breathing. We need to prepare ourselves for what life has to offer us. If we do we may just hear that still small voice of calm; that voice that is less than a whisper and yet so much more than silence.

And if we do we will be prepared for whatever life offers to us in the coming year.

New Years Day: Holding on to what is Good

Look to this day!

For it is life, the very life of life.
In its brief course lie all the verities and realities of existence:
The bliss of growth, the glory of action, the splendour of beauty;
For yesterday is but a dream,
And tomorrow is only a vision
But today, well lived, makes every yesterday a dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore, to this day.

words attributed to Kalidasa, a 3rd century Indian author.

New Years Day is a time for new beginnings, a time for hope of what might be and a time to reflect on what has been before us. And yet it is just a day, much like any other day really. The sun has risen, as it has always risen and in a few hours time it will set, as it has always set.

As we look out into the unknown future, it has become our custom, on this day, to resolve to do things differently than we have in the past. We make New Year’s resolutions and begin to practise them, on this day. The problem is of course that we rarely keep them up; we quickly slip back into those old habits.

I wonder if this will ever work. I suspect the reason it doesn’t is that we focus too much of our attention on the negative, on what is wrong. Perhaps what we ought to be doing is focusing on what is healthy and good and actually work and practise these habits. Maybe by focusing on what is wrong all that we end up doing is actually strengthening these weaknesses and give them more power.  Perhaps the problem is that we spend too much time living in our problems, as opposed to living in the solutions to our problems. By doing so are we actually strengthening the destructive aspects of ourselves as opposed to our compassionate sides? As I keep reminding myself - the wolf that wins is the one that we feed.

Life is constantly changing, nothing ever stays exactly the same, and no moment is like any other. Each of us experience these moments differently too; we each bring our pasts with us to each moment and this always impacts on the present. We cannot completely let go, nor should we. Yes we need to let go of what stops us living as best we can, but we also need to hold on to what is healthy, that which feeds and nurtures us. We need these lifelines to live happily and healthily.

But what is it that we need to develop? What should we hold on to? What do we need to nurture in order to live healthy and happy lives? And what are the lifelines that sustain us, when life seems really tough?

Paul of Tarsus, in the 13^th Chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians names three truths that can hold us through any of the storms of life. These truths are secured, they are rock solid, they are eternal and they are of course universal. We can hold on and depend on these three, but only if we nurture and strengthen them. Something we will find difficult if we focus all are energy on what is wrong with us on what we must let go of. Actually we may well find that our troubles begin to disappear as we develop these three.

And what are these three? 

They are faith, hope and love.

And what do these three mean?

Faith is about trusting in life itself; it is about living as openly and honestly as possible; it is about accepting that there is pain in life, but that there is also so much joy; it is realising that the mere fact that we exist at all is life’s greatest gift. This allows us to sing the joy of living, in all its mystery. It is also about seeing that we are all in this together and that we need to connect as much as possible to the life in which we share. We need to ensure that this lifeline is secure and not worn or frayed at the edges. This is something we need to hold onto and not let go of. Why, you may well ask? Well because it sustains us through the vicissitudes of life. Life does not offer much certainty, but we need not despair at this. Again you may ask why? Well because from despair grows hope.

Hope is the second of those eternal, universal truths. Hope is rooted in despair; it grows from the same place. To live in hope is to believe that if we live with conviction and compassion that we can effect positive change in our world, even if we ourselves do not get to see its full fruition. Hope is about planting those seeds when and where ever we can. This is why I committed to leading the 12 Steps to a Compassionate Life Reading groups in the congregations I serve. It was an attempt to develop the connection to our compassionate natures and therefore improve our own lives and those around us.  I have faith in the hope that Confucius’s concentric circles of compassion can bear fruit in our age and that by developing our compassionate natures we can go out into our communities, our regions, our countries and even our world and be the change we want to see.

To live with hope is to live with the attitude that the future is genuinely open. The God of my understanding works with us and guides us but leaves life open, it is not pre-ordained. “The Lure of Divine Love” draws us out of ourselves, but it also allows life to develop freely. I accept that the past does have power, I have a strong sense of history, this is very important. That said I do not believe that the past defines the future, not everything is inevitable. The future is unwritten.

Life is definitely a journey worth taking, even during its toughest moments. Yes we all despair at times and we all live with uncertainty, but the beacon of hope is always there. This brings to mind a line in from "Proverbs" “Where there is no vision (no hope) the people perish.” Hope is a vital lifeline it both holds and sustains us. It is an eternal and universal principle and one that requires nurture. It is all about love.

But what is love? How can it sustain us? By the way I am not talking of romance here; I am talking of spiritual love, self giving love. Spiritual love is that power that connects us to our true selves, one another, the life we share and whatever it is that connects all life. What I myself call God; that power that is greater than all and yet present in each. Love is about caring deeply and passionately about life itself. This of course requires attention; it is a life line that requires nurture. Love reminds me that we do not live for ourselves alone or by ourselves alone. “no man is an island” or as Kurt Vonnegut once put it “one human being is no human being”. The universal and eternal truth is that we need the love, the care, the companionship of others in order to fully experience what it is to be alive. By ourselves we are never fully alive.

So my New Year’s message this year is not really about letting go, it’s actually about holding and developing those lifelines that sustain and nurture us. Instead of focusing on the problem, let’s focus on the solution. Remember the wolf that wins is the one that we feed. Therefore if we spend our time focusing on the problem we may well end up making it bigger than it actually is; where as if we simply feed and develop our compassionate sides, thereby feeding the solution, the problem will simply wither away and die.

Whatever this year brings us, let us resolve to develop lives of faith, hope and love and be the change that we want to see. The future truly is unwritten, no one knows what tomorrow will bring.

Lao Tzu once said:

If there is to be peace in the world,

There must be peace in the nations.

If there is to be peace in the nations,

There must be peace in the cities.

If there is to be peace in the cities,

There must be peace between neighbours.

If there is to be peace between neighbours,

There must be peace in the home.

If there is to be peace in the home,

There must be peace in the heart.