“I have removed a few useless things from my life, and God has come closer to see what was going on.” I read this in a book by Christian Bobin, and many other words come to mind, from different sources but with points in common: to let go, to leave, to loosen one’s grip, to detach oneself, to untie, to give, to abandon, to break, to share out, to hand over…

We tend to prefer their opposites: to retain, to keep, to cling, to reserve, to hold fast; and we do so with determination and sometimes even with ferocity, at times without distinguishing whether what we cling to has the strength of a rope or the fragility of a thread. But John of the Cross already warned: “It makes no difference whether a bird is tied by a thin thread or a thick one: unless it breaks it, it will never be able to take flight…”

Text by Dolores Aleixandre
To read it in full, click here
(published in the journal Christus. Accompagner la vie spirituelle, no. 267)

Dolores Aleixandre