Begin with Letting Go

In Genesis 1, there’s a phrase used six times: “And there was evening and there was morning,” the first day, the second day, and so on. Evening and morning. Six times.

We’ve been conditioned, haven’t we, to start our day when we get ourselves out of bed and our feet touch the floor. The morning light is just coming through the window, and the day has begun. From a look at the beginning of time, it would appear that we’ve got it turned around.

In Jewish tradition, the day begins at nightfall, or sunset, and continues until the next nightfall, as reflected in the Genesis story of creation. The day begins in the evening and is half over by the time we get out of bed. The day begins with rest. There was evening and there was morning.

People living monastic lives think about a day as a microcosm of life. Every created thing is living and dying, and we can live our days embracing that rhythm. Jesus lived his life knowing he would die. It must have helped him to fully live every day.

I have recently begun to assess my life from the perspective that I have maybe 25 to 30 years left if I live a normal lifespan. Yikes. When I think about how quickly the first portion of my life has seemed to fly by, this reality takes my breath away. I have worked very hard at keeping my death away from me. Why would I now work at embracing it? All of these thoughts make me want to engage in what counts. I want to kiss my husband more, hug my kids longer when they leave my house, and spend more time in deep conversation with my neighbors. It’s helped me refocus, to be more tender and less driven.

Henri Nouwen once wrote that he had a deep sense, hard to articulate, that if we could really befriend death, we would be free people. So many of our doubts and hesitations, ambivalences and insecurities are bound up with our deep-seated fear of death that our lives would be significantly different if we could relate to death as a familiar guest instead of as a threatening stranger.

I wonder if we could imitate Jesus and the monastics and live our days with our mortality in front of us and thereby live our lives to the fullest. Think of how our lives would change. We’d make everything count, wouldn’t we?

Our day begins with letting go or resting in a transition time through the dark, and every morning becomes a resurrection of sorts, a coming out of the tomb. And there is evening and there is morning. And there is death and there is resurrection!

Have you ever thought about our entire lives being patterned after death and new life? Every day can be a practice of letting go and being renewed. Our sleeping and rising again to new mercies every morning serves to remind us that ours is a Paschal Mystery lived out in everyday ways. The Paschal Mystery is simply the process of dying and rising, death and new life.

Jesus lived this pattern his entire life and invites us into it as well. Letting go of closely held agendas and learning to walk trusting that we are loved by God is a death and resurrection.