On Letting Go

Over the last couple of weeks I've been speaking to the parents of rising freshmen at Radford University's parent-new student orientation program.  My assignment centers on talking about the necessity of letting go.  I've been reminded of the time I was there when Melissa learned to ride a bike.

We were in the parking lot of Handley High School in Winchester, Virginia when I was pastor there.  We had gone up to the parking lot because of its generous size and absence of cars.  The training wheels had come off and Melissa wobbled a bit as her bony knees pumped up and down on the peddles.  I ran along behind her holding on to the handle of the seat.

Then she gained speed, the wobbling stopped and I began to feel a tug from the handle I held.  I ran faster, but Melissa soon outpaced even my fastest stride.  I let go.

And there she went, blonde hair streaming out behind her, pink dress flapping in the increasing breeze, and squeals of delight meeting my ears as she took off.  I realized in that instant that I'd be doing that more as the years went by -- letting go.  I stood there in the parking lot as she orbited me where I stood panting.  I realized that in a few years it would be a car she'd be driving away.  After that, it would be college -- which is where she's been for two years now.

But the letting go -- man, that can tear at your heart.  Once, she had gone off on her bike and I heard her yelling for me to come and watch.  I went into the front yard, and here she came, blasting down the steep hill that was the upper part of our street.  It was a STEEP hill, and she charged down it like Eowyn charging orks in the "The Lord of the Rings."  It scared me to death, but she negotiated it very well, and along with it, gained some real confidence.

That's why we have a hard time letting go -- we fear the hills they'll choose.  Real dangers lurk out there.  But they won't get the confidence they'll need in life if they don't choose their own hills which they then can negotiate successfully for their own victories.

Ah, letting go.  That means releasing them into the hands of God.  I suppose when we turn loose, that really means that we release them into God's embrace.

"Nothing to Say?"

In October of 2004, Henlee Barnette died.  If you don’t know who Henlee Barnette was, consult Google.  (That's Henlee in the photo to the right.)  Suffice it to say that Henlee was a Baptist saint if there ever was one.  He taught ethics at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky back in the late 50’s and early 60’s, up through the 70’s.  He protested the Viet Nam war, marched with Dr. Martin Luther King for civil rights, and worked tirelessly in the impoverished Haymarket neighborhood in Louisville.  He was accused of being a communist and branded a godless liberal by the more conservative folks in Southern Baptist life.  Henlee had personal relationships with Clarence Jordan of Cotton Patch Gospel fame and co-founder with Millard Fuller of Habitat for Humanity.

Henlee was working with Wayne Oates, my mentor, at University Hospital in the Department of Psychiatry back when I was doing my Ph.D. work and I had the blessing of getting to know him personally.  With the kind of experiences he’d had and people he’d worked with and met, no one had more reason to be proud than Henlee Barnette -- which is why the following experience amazed me so.

I was heading up to the psychiatric ward to see a client that had been referred to me when I met Henlee coming out of the ward.  We greeted one another and then he said, “Hey, your father-in-law invited me to come to Samford University to speak in chapel (He told me this because my father-in-law taught religion and was the chaplain at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama.)

I said, “Great, Henlee!  When are you going?”

“I’m not going.  I told him I couldn’t come at this time.”

“Oh,” I said, “You must be very busy.”

“No,” he responded.  “I just don’t have anything to say.”

Nothing to say?  Henlee Barnette had nothing to say?  This was the guy who’d marched with M.L. King, Jr. and he didn’t have anything to say?!

Well, he offered me no explanation.  He just walked off down the hall, his old tweed jacket sagging at his hips.  Over the next few years of working with Henlee, though, reflecting with him in seminars, and listening to him patiently reason his way through the multitude of ethical dilemmas faced in the modern psychiatric clinic, I came to realize something about having something to say.  “The greater the words, the lesser the meaning,” as Coheleth says. “They think they’ll be heard because of their multitude of words,” said Christ.

That’s the problem with blogs.  If you don’t write something new every day, people quit going to your blogsite.  So pressure builds to write something, whether you have something to say or not.  Whenever I sit down to type something out for this blog, I think of Henlee Barnette who marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. and how he turned down a speaking engagement because he “didn’t have anything to say.”  Wouldn’t it be great if more people these days measured themselves with that kind of humility?

And if you come to this blog and find a month has passed since my last entry, let’s just say that the silence is my attempt at honesty.