In various conversations recently I’ve heard people’s stories of what they have been ‘sorting out’ and ‘getting rid of’. Perhaps the long lockdown has forced us into taking spring cleaning more seriously. As we move towards the summer we want to be less encumbered with …stuff!
It’s been said that one of the skills of a great artist is knowing what to leave out. Sculptors need to leave out stone, painters can’t fit everything in, poets certainly have to work hard at getting the words just right, and of course writers have to be really strict with themselves.
Being creative is hard work and sometimes means letting go of the good so you can create the best. Life also is a creative endeavour and hard work. One of the big questions that the ancient philosophers used to ask was ‘how to live well’ or ‘what does it mean to live a good life’? A virtuous character became the Greek ideal.
A virtuous character was important to Jesus too, but he knew it could lead to a sense of self achievement as an end in itself, so he was careful to make it a by-product of a God centred life. Jesus said that his purpose was to do his Father’s will and that in order ‘to find your life you must lose it’ and ‘take up your cross and follow me’.
He lived what he preached and gave up the good that was his life, his teaching and his following in order to allow the best to emerge from the cross and the empty tomb. Jesus knew the importance of leaving things out and you could say that his journey to the cross was a gradual letting go until he was hanging naked on a cross and took his final breath.
On the cross the Creator of the world let go of his own claim to life. His Spirit is now released to help us let go of what can seem important, even essential, even good, so that we can live into God’s best for us. The long arc of life, particularly in our later years, is a gradual letting go. Why not allow your faith to give meaning and purpose to what is going to happen anyway. May we all ‘grow old gracefully’, or perhaps even dare I say… ‘grow old creatively’?
And as we emerge from lockdown slowly maybe there are some things we have been able to do without that we can perhaps still do without. Just let it go and see what living creatively can look like.
Rev. Paul Watson
