Bishop's letters: June 06 +James
LETTING GO
In order to grow, lobsters sometimes have to leave their shells. If they don’t, what has been their home and chief means of protection becomes first their prison, then their coffin. But there is a painfully vulnerable time for every lobster between discarding the old and growing the new. The temptation to crawl back into the old shell and pretend there’s no problem must be huge.
The same applies to us in everyday life. Letting go is an essential part of human growth. Teenagers have to let go of childhood if they’re to ‘grow up’. Adults have to let go of job opportunities which fail to materialise; relationships which don’t work out, and cherished homes every time they move. Parents have to let go of their children when they go to university or leave home. All of us have to let go of family and friends when they die.
One of the best books I know on bereavement and loss is called ‘Letting go’. It spells out the serious consequences for our own growth and development if we don’t, and reminds me of one line in a poem which has been firmly lodged in my mind for many years. ‘The love’ says the poet, ‘is in the letting go’.
But our natural inclination is to cling on – as long and as hard as we can. Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone and founder of the journal ‘Science’, once pointed out how counter-productive that can be. “When one door closes” he said, “another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.” The actress Minnie Driver adopts a similar philosophy. “There is absolutely no point sitting around feeling sorry for yourself” she remarked recently. “The great power you have is to let go. Focus on what you have, not on what has gone or been unkindly removed.”
Perhaps there is a message here for those of us who mourn the loss of the Church as we fondly imagine it used to be. That includes middle-aged clergy (like me) who are allegedly in a state of collective and unacknowledged grief for what once was: the secure, stable, reasonably well-attended Church into which we were ordained, and the straightforward clerical role which is now changing almost beyond recognition. It also includes hundreds (if not thousands) of faithful parishioners who regret the passing of so much they once held dear – from pitch pine pews to pastorally available parsons. Like lobsters, we have had to crawl out of our shells, and we feel deeply vulnerable as we wait for the new ones to grow.
The good news is that they are growing – and we will grow with them, if only we can resist the temptation to cling on to what is familiar, and learn to embrace the ‘new thing’ God is doing. This is an exciting time to be a Christian. It is also a painful time because, as the Risen Christ explained to Mary by the empty tomb, the love – is in the letting go.
James Newcome
