Get Little

Let Go

“All good spirituality teaches about letting go of what you don’t need and who you are not. Then, when you can get little enough and naked enough and poor enough, you’ll find that the little place where you are is ironically more than enough and is all that you need.”

Richard Rohr

          One thing the mandatory isolation of the coronavirus is bringing to the front of our minds is what is truly important. It shows up as an ache for what we are missing. It stirs up our dreams with memories and because we aren’t rushing here and there, thoughts are able to be entertained. We begin to understand, as Richard Rohr says, “what we don’t need and who we are not.” In this second week of social distancing in the USA, the “fun” part of “house arrest” is growing thin, and we are beginning to get restless. We miss our friends, our work, our trips to the gym, our ordinary errands. Suddenly, what seemed to be simply routine everyday life, even boring most days, now has a bit of a nostalgic gleam about it. We read the reports and watch the news about how many people are sick and how many have died, and how overwhelmed our hospitals and medical professionals are and we feel sad and scared.

          Fr. Richard Rohr tells us: “All great spirituality is about what we do with our pain. If we do not transform our pain, we transmit it to those around us.” Are we finding ourselves to be melancholy, grouchy, maybe even steaming mad? One of my sons, who works in the recovery community, tells me people are not managing their alcohol consumption very well. Meaning, we are possibly numbing out. Unfortunately, numbing out does not qualify as transforming pain. It just puts it on hold—kind of like those dishes that get pushed to the back of the refrigerator shelf. When you discover them months later, they are way-worse than when you put them in—possibly even unrecognizable. Transformed perhaps, but not in a good way.

          One good and healthy way to manage this viral-incarceration is to get creative—get on google and learn how to do something new—make bread, get your garden ready for planting, paint an old piece of furniture (all of us have half-full cans of paint that will never dry up in our basements, right). And while you’re doing that, allow yourself to think about what is truly important, what brings meaning and substance to your life, and what opens your heart. Ponder the preciousness of life and how little you truly need to be happy and satisfied. Give thanks for your life, and for the fact that, due to the coronavirus, you know the truth of you are and who you are not. Now you’ve arrived at your “little place,” and that’s a blessing.

                                                  In the Spirit,

                                                  Jane