What We Hold Onto, What We Let Go
Throughout my neighborhood, the autumn trees have started shedding their leaves, like forgotten memories. The grass has settled in for its long winter’s rest. By its silent model, nature is instructing us: what do we need the let go of? Are we too slowing down, finding time to rest, as the year winds down?
For once, my life seems to mirror nature’s wise example.
I received a lesson in slowing down earlier this month when I spent time guiding a retreat at the New Camaldoli Hermitage in Big Sur, CA. Big Sur is one of those places in the U.S. where you still can travel for miles without seeing a person or even a house. The monastery sits on a high cliff where you literally look down on clouds. There is no cell phone or Internet service in the guest rooms. Only one room on the entire 899-acre monastery campus has Wifi.
If there is ever a place to unplug from email, texts, and social media, this is it.
Checking my cell phone for news and messages is such a Pavlovian proposition that I reflexively pulled out my phone several times during the first few days of my visit, forgetting that no messages would display there. Soon, though, I learned to limit my daily cell phone use to a half hour or so, the way a dieter learns to restict their intake of sugar and carbs. It was downright freeing.
The Camaldolese are like the Navy seals of monastic life. They once lived in individual cells, ate alone and prayed alone, in silence. In fact, the guest hermitages each still have a set of tin food containers, a holdover from the years when monks would receive their food by putting their tins outside their room.
Father Ignatius Tully, the monastery’s current leader, said the Camaldolese order eventually decided that sharing in community was as important as fostering solitude in order to deepen one’s interior life. The monks now eat and pray three times a day together and the public is welcome to join their community prayers.
There are many reminders around New Camaldoli of the importance of community and of being attentive to the common good. A sign in the showers reminds guests to rinse quickly and shut off the water when they lather before rinsing again, to conserve water. A sign above the toilet asks that we be judicious in flushing toilet paper to avoid clogging the pipes.
The final sign you see as you depart New Camaldoli on a winding road with steep dropoffs toward the Pacific Ocean is not only a recommendation for safe travel, it is good advice for living: “Please Drive Slowly.”
This past week brought a lesson closer to home — one in letting go. My husband and I had the floors in our house refinished. They needed it after 19 years. It meant moving out all our furniture temporarilty, as well as all the books, magazines, knick knacks, files, and framed photographs that had piled up over the years along with clothes, shoes and boxes crammed into closets.
The boxes that had been stored away for years opened to some pleasant surprises. In one, I came across a black and white photograph of my 8th grade graduating class at Bayonne, New Jersey’s Lincoln Elementary School. All those sweet young faces. The girls with their hair done up, the boys in white shirts and ties. Remembering each one of them brought tears to my eyes.
I found copies of the school newspaper I edited in my senior year in high school, along with my yearbooks, and the college literary magazine in which my early poems appeared.
Then there was just stuff. Mounds and mounds of it. Copies of The New York Times and The New Yorker — some going back to 2017 — which I had kept figuring I’d one day get around to reading them. Cardboard New Year’s Eve hats my husband and I wore one year. Some masks from a Mardi Gras party we attended. Slacks I hadn’t worn since 2005. CDs I never listened to. Enough cups to invite our entire neighborhood over for coffee.
Why did I keep all these things? And why was it so hard to throw them away?
In the end, I took a page from the autumn trees. I decided to just let some things go. Clothes I haven’t worn in years are going to a shelter for the homeless. The old magazines and newspapers are in the recycle bin with, dare I say, not a few books I’ll likely never get a chance to read even if I live to be 95.
In her book, “Gold In Your Memories: Sacred Moments, Glimpses of God,” Benedictine writer Sister Macrina Wiederkehr encourages us to create a “magic place” for ourselves by “sweeping an area clean.” I would say our home is about one third lighter than it was a few days ago. I don’t know now how I survived so long with all the clutter. If I ever move again, I’ll furnish the new place with just a bed, a table for eating, a desk for writing, a few chairs for inviting over friends, and a bookcase to empty out periodically in order to replenish with new books.
The irony is that I kept so many items cluttering my house because I thought I couldn’t do without them, even though I apparently forgot about them — for years.
This fall, can we emulate the autumn trees? What do we need to let go of to make a “magic” space for ourselves? Can we be like the grass and take time to slow down and rest as winter begins?
As the sign at the New Camaldoli monastery says, “Please drive slowly.”
