Desperately Seeking Detachment

Yesterday was the 24th anniversary of my mother's death. Although many years have passed since that awful Tuesday morning, some anniversaries hit me harder than others. This year was one of those years, and it wasn't even a "milestone." Maybe it's because of the stress I'm under professionally. Maybe it's because of some personal stuff that's got me down. More likely it's a combination of both atop the usual grief.

I usually post a remembrance of my mother on April 12, but this time I felt the need to go more inward with my "celebration" of the day. I needed to chew on some things that still have to do with my mother all these many years after her death.

And what I kept coming back to was the word "detachment." My mother's death from colon cancer left a gaping hole in my life and in my family, but what you quickly -- or sometimes not so quickly -- learn after the loss of a close loved one is that rest of the world goes on without so much as a backward glance. You either move with it, carrying your grief deep in your heart, or you get stuck.

It was there, in this school of life, that I first learned detachment, although I didn't recognize it as that. I learned that I could go on, I would go on, without my mother, despite the fact that I couldn't imagine that was possible. I learned that losing my mother didn't lessen my love for her; it only shifted the physical landscape of our relationship. I learned that the ties that bind us to the people in our lives can snap in a flash and without warning, with or without sickness to speed things along.

Now I wonder if the kind of detachment forced upon me long ago might be a good template for detachment of my own choosing right now. It's not easy, to be sure. Trying to untangle unhealthy connections to possessions, habits, family members, friends, and more goes against everything the ego wants. We want to feel loved. We want to feel valued. We want to feel good and look good and live good. But what does that get any of us?

We end up clinging to -- or grieving for -- things we can't have, people who won't love us, places we can't go, success we don't achieve, and on and on. Before you know it, life revolves around the lack, not the blessings. But if we can learn detachment, to own things without letting them own us, to love people without expecting love in return, we inch closer to the place Jesus talked about, a place where none of this earthly stuff matters all that much because we have our sights set on something much better.

With each passing year, detachment seems to find its way deeper and deeper into my life without my really trying all that hard, mostly with regard to professional things or material things. It's the personal stuff that is so difficult to detach from because it's so, well, personal. But it's not impossible, and for the first time I think I'm feeling detachment finally settle in there as well. We'll see. I can't force it because then I'd just be getting attached to my detachment.

"The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life." -- John 12:25

Letting go and loving God first

My most recent Life Lines column:

A couple of recent events have forced me to focus on the idea of "detachment," letting go of those things that threaten to control us, consume us, or, at the very least, use up a lot of our energy and time unnecessarily. In our world today, detachment is most often talked about in reference to material things. In fact, it's almost a bit of a fad. People want to live more simply, downsize their houses, buy local, go green.

For me, the material stuff isn't so much the issue. I don't need the big TV or expensive shoes. It's the less tangible things that I seem to have to disentangle myself from. It makes me think of the passage from Luke 14:26, when Jesus says, "If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple." For a long time that reading just didn't resonate with me. How could we "hate" our mother and father, our brothers and sisters? But, as usual, Jesus wasn't talking literally but in story form, trying to teach us a bigger concept.

Putting messianic prophecies aside (because so much of what Jesus said meant more to the Jews of his time than any of us can understand without a Bible scholar on hand), this passage is a reminder to us of where God needs to be in our lives. Of course we're not supposed to hate the people close to us. After all, Jesus told us we were to love everyone, even our enemies, so I think it's fair to say we're supposed to love our family. But those relationships cannot become so all-consuming that they get in the way of our relationship with God.

So that's what I've been thinking about these days. We go through life trying to fulfill certain roles in our immediate families, our extended families, our circle of friends, our community. Sometimes we don't even stop to think whether that role is good for us or for anyone else; it's just what we do because, well, aren't we supposed to do it? No, as it turns out.

Our job is to love God first and let everything else fall into place. Detachment, I think, is a natural byproduct of the God-centered life. So, when we can't make a family member love us, we find a way to love them anyway and let go. When our children start to spread their wings and we have the urge to mold them in our own image, we find a way to pull back and let them choose their own path. When we can't be all things to all people, we find a way to step aside and quickly realize that things move forward without us.

Still, it's not an easy thing to do, this detaching. Human nature makes us want to hold on for dear life, whether it's to our possessions, our children, our larger family, or something even less tangible than that — our fears, our expectations, our self image.

I think I learned the greatest lesson in detachment when my mother died more than 22 years ago. Despite our physical separation, I realized — perhaps slowly as the initial grief began to fade — that the bond we shared transcended time and space. It remains for all time, and that's a beautiful gift and a powerful lesson.

It's only when we let go of our need to hold onto people and things that we finally experience the depth of love we were hungering for. It's only when we remove the mask we put on for the world and face our true selves squarely in the mirror that we finally have the opportunity become the people we were created to be. It's only when we love God first that we finally learn to love those around us more perfectly.

To read previous Life Lines columns, click HERE.

Changing perspective

Since about a year ago or so, I've been somewhat obsessed with the idea of getting to Italy in the not-too-distant future. "Italy by 50" has been my motto, giving me about four years to make my dream come true. I read books about Italy, watch movies set in Italy, looking longingly at photos of anything to do with Italy -- landscape, art, food, you name it and, if it's Italian, I'm interested.

Part of my desire to go to Italy has to do with the fact that I've worked for the Church for so long and have yet to visit the home office. Part of it has to do with my more recent fascination with all things Franciscan and the urge to experience Assisi for myself, and part of it has to do with my Italian ancestors and my need to walk where they once walked and to witness my heritage first hand.

I was going merrily along with my "Italy by 50" plan, when all of a sudden, without warning, I did a 180 for reasons I still can't put my finger on. What if getting to Italy doesn't really matter? What if I just take Italy off the table? Does that make my life here less than it is now? No. Does it mean the rest of my life won't be full enough? No. I'm not sure where this new perspective is coming from. The best way to describe it is a feeling of folding in. I don't mean that in a negative, self-defeatist sort of way but in an unencumbered, realistic way. Rather than feel disappointed by the fact that I will most likely never get to Italy, I feel a sense of quiet neutrality, acceptance, even peace. I don't know what to make of it, really. I find it all kind of curious.

Now, if someone handed me tickets and told me I could go to Italy tomorrow, would I go? You bet. But I don't feel a driving need to figure out how to make it happen anymore. If I'm meant to get there, I guess it will happen some day. I just don't think it's likely and, for the first time in a while, I don't really mind. I think it's called detachment. Wish I could put that into play in some are areas of my life.