Familiar faces were gathered there together on 11th March when we
met to focus on the topic of “When I was a Child” – Letting Go.
We each have a ragged journey towards maturity. We progress slower in some aspects than in
others, and it is common for us to go to our graves immature in some way or
other, with friends posthumously describing us as having had an incurable blind
spot (or two) that were part of our unique charm.
For the most part we aim to become adult across the broad sweep of
human activity, and to keep growing up throughout our life, but we forget that some
ideas or rules that we take for granted are those we inherited as a child. Unexamined, these can cause problems instead.
It is particularly important that we mature in our spiritual life,
which is to say in those values and beliefs that, though hidden, drive our deepest and most
instinctive behaviour.
Instructions meant
to help us in our early years need to be let go when we have moved on from the
help they can give. The choice and challenge are our own. We have to take
responsibility for our own becoming, our own knowing, our own doing, and our own relating to the
world.
If we don’t let leftover,
irrelevant knowings diffuse away, or transform into something more appropriate,
we are the authors of our own continued knottedness. It’s not always easy to do, especially since –
inevitably – those instructions were given to us when young by people whose authority
we trusted, often within the family or placeholders for family.
The readings we heard were by the apostle Paul (1 Corinthians 13), William Shakespeare (Romeo & Juliet, Act 2 Scene 2) and
Dennis Lee/Jim Henson/Terry Jones (Sarah’s closing speech from the film Labyrinth).
Through dangers untold and hardships
unnumbered,
I have fought my way here
To the castle beyond the Goblin City,
To take back the child that you have stolen,
For my will is as strong as yours,
And my kingdom is as great.
You have no power over me.
