Go Letting

People talk a lot about letting go. It’s seen as something that you do actively. You decide to clear out the closet and let things go; you decide to stop eating out as frequently and you’re letting that go. However, as I look back over 10 years of monastic life, I realize that the letting go has happened to me. Sure, I’ve made some choices about living more simply, not accumulating as much stuff, but mostly it’s been a process of accepting that less is more. I’d say that I’ve been letting the go happen.

When I entered the monastery, I was very sure I was following God’s call. Ten years on and, despite many bumps in the road, I think I was right. But it always felt like an active process: I listened to God, I heard the call, I acted on what I heard.

As I review where I am now, it feels different. I find I simply don’t have the need to do things that I used to. I loved to go to the movies, opera, ballet, restaurants and there was always another place entering my list of places I wanted to travel to. I still love that those things exist, and I’m very grateful for the opportunities I’ve had to indulge those interests. I think they’ve given me pleasure, broadened my horizon and generally been a good thing in my life. I don’t actively think that I couldn’t bear to do any of them anymore and, in a moderate way, I still do some of them occasionally. However, I find more and more that I’m content with less and I don’t feel a real, impelling desire to do any of these things. If some of them happen, that’s fine, but if they don’t, they don’t, and I’m not bothered. They’ve let me go.

When I felt called to monastic life, something I wanted badly was to become more detached from things. I sought an interior desert. The challenge is that you can’t just make detachment and the desert happen. I’d have to say that the monastic way of life, with its rhythm and particular way of looking at the world, has done it for me. I’ve become more detached. This isn’t the same as not caring. I care very much about how people treat one another, about integrity and making ethical decisions, but somehow I now do that from a place of greater calm and emptiness. I’ve been let go.

 

Karen Rose, OSB                                                                            May 10, 2019