A short review by Philip Harvey in the Autumn Issue of the Newsletter of the Community of the Holy Name, Cheltenham
Written during lockdown, in a period of solitude in which the author had
to plan moving from her home of fifty years in Wales to a new home in Oxford,
this book is about how “we all have to face up to the process of letting go at
intervals throughout our lives.” She writes of “embarking upon a new life when
one has reached old age.”
Letting go of familiar places, letting go of former ways, letting go of
people in our life, and possessions – these are realities for which we find we
have no choice. This book follows the different ways in which the author has reflected
and learnt to live through such letting go. She explains how age has taught her
to approach the world with simplicity. Learning to forgive is essential. She
finds meaning through common rituals, detailing them as she goes.
Given the author’s lifelong interest in monastic life, which she has drawn
upon and written about extensively, it makes sense that this is central to her now.
Hence her questions, coming from Benedictine practice, “Am I becoming a more
loving person?” and “Are you hastening towards your heavenly home?” Likewise,
her renewed need to let go of illusion and false gods, to listen “with the ear
of the heart.” A chapter on reading the Psalms, relying particularly on the
work of Thomas Merton and Jim Cotter, is an integral connection.
This book of learning and loss is the closest Esther de Waal has come to
an autobiography. It is not without grief and pain, though thanksgiving is the
keynote. She is taking stock of her life, what she has gained and lost, but
significantly what she values that she must learn to let go of. It’s easy to
let go of things you don’t like, much harder letting go of that which you love.
The range of her quotation, most especially, is a value she gives back
to the reader. No one else can be Esther de Waal and this is her personal account
of dealing with change. However, there are meditations, poems, sayings and
stories here that speak to our own individual experience in this context, that speak
of her world of valued spiritual guides. She writes: “I am grateful when W. H.
Auden speaks of the need to practice the scales of rejoicing, because it
reminds me of the sort of discipline that I should be looking for in myself.”
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