The Slow Way Newsletter: Freedom, and the Spiritual Practice of Letting Go
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Freedom, and the Spiritual Practice of Letting Go
One of the great gifts of our move has been the ability to upend everything our two older boys had experienced about school prior to this year. We moved across the country and put them in a school of 24 students (half elementary, half middle), a school that has no grades and no homework. I know, you guys. What.
In the fall of 2019 I read a book written by a couple in Austin who decided they were fed up with traditional schooling for their kids, and decided to make the school they dreamed of. What they made is a school that invites kids to be self-directed in their learning, that encourages deep conversations about history and philosophy and current events, and that allows the students to hold each other accountable to creating the school culture they want to live in.
I had always been a public school advocate, until it wasn’t working for one of my boys. Long story short, there were three Acton schools in New Jersey. We picked our town for a lot of reasons, but one of them? There’s an Acton in our town.
Even though much of the country is deep in summertime, we have a few more weeks to go around here. This week my almost-thirteen-year-old, who dreams of making terrifying movies for a living, built up his courage and walked by himself to the newly reopened AMC theater in town, and asked to meet the manager. The Acton Middle School end of the year project is an apprenticeship that encourages students to find a short-term job working in a field they’re interested in. So my son offered to dispense popcorn and clean sticky floors so he can be close to the movies.
Here’s the thing: This is a miracle. My boy who hated, hated school, who refused to do homework and regularly cried over school projects, hasn’t cried at all this year. And two days ago he asked me to drop him off by himself at the movie theater so he could complete an assignment that I hadn’t nagged him about once.
Making this change was terrifying for me. I love grades. When I was a kid, grades were how I proved my value to myself. They were the thing that made grown ups like me. Grades taught me how to work hard, how to give up my comfort in order to find success. I was the girl grades were made for. I won the school experiment. (And also, it took me twenty years outside of school to realize that I didn’t have to earn gold stars anymore.)
But grades did the opposite to my son. They told him he was unworthy. They showed him how to quit, how to give up trying, how to believe he couldn’t learn and wouldn’t learn. I knew in my gut that I wanted something drastic to shake him back awake, to show him that he actually did like to learn, that the world was full of ideas and facts and stories that were waiting for him to discover, not for the sake of pleasing any grown ups, but for the sake of joy. Learning could be something that brings joy.
So we started Acton and my husband Chris and I released the control that comes with seeing homework and grades. (In the short-term those two things make a parent feel better. We want to know they were actually learning something! And, in the early days, Acton seemed too easy and mysterious. I worried.) Still, we followed the directions of the guides (teachers) and learned to keep our mouths shut about whether or not our kids were learning enough math. (Reader, at the beginning, they definitely weren’t...but they eventually realized they were behind.) And we watched our older boys become people with self-motivation, skills at talking to grown ups, and friendships that felt more authentic and kind than much of what we’d seen them experience at school in the years prior.
Okay, so this isn’t an ad for Acton Academies. (Though if you’re intrigued, look them up!) But I have been thinking about what our school is tapping into in our human condition. How there’s something about freedom that wakes us up, and to offer that freedom to my son, to give him the opportunity to wake up, it required my release, my loss of control. When I released my control of their education, they were finally allowed to grab it for themselves. What does that mean?
I keep thinking there’s something to this for us spiritually. What did Paul mean, for example, in his letter to the Galatians, when he explains that Christ set us free for the sake of freedom? Maybe some of you who grew up evangelical sang that song in the late nineties: “It is for freedom that you set us free!” As Chris sometimes says, “Just because it’s in the Bible doesn’t mean you should sing it.” Especially if you don’t know what it means. It’s sort of like saying, “It’s for the sake of eating that I eat!” Or, “It is for driving a car that I drive my car!”
What is Paul getting at about freedom? Father Richard Rohr wrote a piece on his blog last summer about inner and outer freedom, and he repeated something I’ve heard him teach over and over: “Authentic spirituality is always on some level or in some way about letting go.”
“The freedom Jesus promises involves letting go of our small self, our cultural biases, and even our fear of loss and death. Freedom is letting go of wanting more and better things; it is letting go of our need to control and manipulate God and others. It is even letting go of our need to know and our need to be right—which we only discover with maturity. We become ever more free as we let go of our three primary motivations: our need for power and control, our need for safety and security, and our need for affection and esteem."
As Rohr describes the Kingdom that Jesus talks about in the gospels, he speaks of it as the Really Real, the ultimate reality. And that ultimate reality, he says, is love.
Freedom is the letting go of our egos, our fears, our pretense. Freedom brings us into the Really Real, and that reality is the place where God is restoring and healing and making us to be our truest selves. So maybe that’s what Paul’s talking about in Galatians 5. Freedom equals the Kingdom of God. And that’s why we’re set free, to discover the reality that God is already here, working in and among us.
Just like the freedom my boys stepped into this past year. When we release control, sometimes the people around us are given the freedom to pick it up, the courage to pursue joy.
And in our spirits, when we release our control, we are given a freedom to see the reality of what actually matters in a world that wants us to grade ourselves and others, to keep up with expectations that just might crush us. There is another way. A slower way. And it starts with letting go.
a slow practice
Take a few minutes today and consider or write down the moments in your life when you felt most free. Maybe these are memories of younger years when you had less responsibilities, when you had fun for fun's sake.
Now think or write about moments when you felt most yourself -- without pretense, without needing to please. Moments when you feel like you tapped into some truth about who God has always intended you to be.
As you consider both these things, ask God what this says about you. Are you living in a way that reveals the person God has always been making you to be? Is your life taking you closer to the Really Real?
Now consider Galatians 5:1 "It is for freedom that Christ as set us free." Pray these words slowly in the same way some might pray The Jesus Prayer, one line at a time, shortening the phrases as you go:
It is for freedom that Christ has set me free
It is for freedom that Christ has set me
It is for freedom that Christ
It is for freedom
It is
End by considering again your longing for freedom, and committing that longing to God, who is already working in your life.