Article December 12, 2016 Issue

Let go of tatters

Carol Rounds

When my son was about eight, we bought him a souvenir T-shirt. He was growing fast, and we purchased one that was extra large. Two years later he was still wearing that shirt every night to sleep in. It was tattered and threadbare, but he wouldn’t let go of it. It was just too comfortable.

I often think of this when I find myself confronted with the need to let go of familiar thought patterns and practices with which I am comfortable. Sometimes I sense a need to drop something, but it seems difficult to let go of ingrained practices and beliefs, even when they are no longer attractive or don’t serve us well—just because it seems easier to cling to them than to seek fresh inspiration and better ways of handling things.

Yet, when we sincerely strive to put God first in our lives, we find that material views of reality start to fall away, and opportunities for spiritual growth are revealed. A desire to see others and ourselves as God’s expression of Himself—complete, perfect, and harmonious—makes the contradiction between reliance on a “familiar,” materially based perspective and radical reliance on God, Spirit, more and more apparent.

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