The Art of Letting Go

There’s something sacred about winter. The days are shorter and wilder, and we are drawn inside to take shelter from the elements. Referred to in many cultures as ‘the resting season’, winter invites us to slow down. Like a bulb buried deep in the soil waiting for spring, winter grounds us again after all the activity of longer, fuller days. God offers the gift of winter to help us reflect and reorientate ourselves once again around what matters most—what’s real.

Lately, I’ve struggled to shake the sensation of being caught between what’s real and what’s mere illusion, so I’ve started ‘letting go’ by turning things off. Like lights (it’s candle season) and of course the various screens that dominate my life in the 21st century. Instead, I’ve been listening to music, and not while doing something else, but for the joy of the art form itself. And reading—for pure pleasure while snuggled up with the dog under a blanket. It feels like a reclamation of something lost; a quiet revolution of the soul!

With the caveat ‘forgive me for the hypocrisy of posting this online’, Lutheran pastor and writer Nadia Bolz-Weber offers a ‘prayer for trying to stay off the internet more’. But really, it’s a prayer for letting go of what hinders the soul’s flourishing. She prays, ‘In your infinite mercy, guide me away from the virtual and into the actual, from feared tomorrows into this only now, from what I see on a screen to what I behold in my life, from what I am manipulated to desire to what I am content to have’.

Nadia concludes with, ‘Guide me to what is most real, because you know, O Lord, how unsuited my heart is for the artificial’.

Is there something God is inviting you to let go of this winter?