#the idea of being in communion with it again is terrifying and unappealing

[francesderwent]

I don’t know I just don’t think that letting go is the final form of love, any love! it’s a stage, and it’s a stage we have to pass through—there was a time when “To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go” was an earth-shattering revelation for me. but it’s penultimate, it has to be. because where does letting go leave you, but in a kind of indifference which is the very opposite of love? you let go to release the ache in your hands from grasping. but then you have to extend your hand again. even if the love doesn’t come back, even if you’ve let go of any hope of it coming back the way it was before or the way you wanted it to, you have to extend a hand to it and hope that it will meet you in the end—in the very end, where the good here unfinished is completed and we may laugh together yet. you have to let go, and then you have to hope for the fulfillment of heaven. I do not believe the “noli me tangere” is ultimate; I believe it is a period of fasting before the wedding feast.

#yes there’s the danger of Lewis’s artist from the great divorce #who is so interested in what going to heaven could do for his art that he’s not thinking about HEAVEN #he had some letting go to do! #but I think there’s an opposite danger where we tear ourselves so violently from what we used to love #that even if we don’t HATE it #the idea of being in communion with it again is terrifying and unappealing #where our indifference is truly opposed to love #not just in the sense of being trapped in Lewis’s purgatory saying ‘no I don’t want to go forward my old love is there and I let it go’ #but in the sense of being HERE and being indifferent to the salvation of that which we used to love #because we can’t be indifferent to ANYONE’S salvation!!! #we hope for ALL!! #and BECAUSE we hope for all letting go never has the last say #(how many disparate references can I fit in one post lol count them) #in which cate tells stories