Hill Connections: Contemplation -Faith Reflections (Detachment)

Detachment quote Detachment -- this is not a message from Mars or Saturn, far removed from today’s reality. Detachment as a key component of spiritual growth is a message very pertinent to our world today.

Why now? Why ever? Why speak of detachment at a time when the nerves of millions of people across the globe are set on edge at the prospect of imminent terrorist attacks communicated daily via the global media?

If anything, maybe we need to be attached to action -- be more pro-active, more fully committed to the struggle between good and evil being waged everywhere with unrelenting force. The greater part of the world population, young men and women, are risking their lives in a war that seems to know no end. Indeed, this is a time like no other for us to remain vigilant, constantly on the alert to insure national and international security.

Who, then, has the luxury to spend any energy on strivng to attain detachment? What could be more foolish? Prudent minds express caution over the danger of such wishful thinking. Just scan the headlines, look at the weekly reports, pay attention to all the careful political analysis in editorial columns, and lend an ear to the endless stream of world-wide intelligence filtering through the capitals of the world. Vigilance and involvement is the call we hear all around us. To speak of detachment at such a moment in history has to be the height of folly.

Even so, detachment in the face of world crisis is not foolishness -- a paradox maybe, contrary to current received opinion, but not foolishness. The truth is that the spiritual wisdom down through the ages has consistently seen detachment as an integral ingredient in spiritual growth. Why does it seem impossible to the pundits of our time to consider detachment as consistent with being taken up with the issues and crises of our day?

Precisely when we suffer from an information glut, non-stop chatter, intemperate, violent language, jittery speculation, shrill accusations and counter accusations, this is the time to shake off certain problems (read non- problems) without in any way being aloof and passive. Rather we must be fully committed to the serious issues that allow a person to recognize whatever comes is a gift from God. Far from being above it all, radical detachment from all things permits interior liberty and releases the mind to reach out to truth, to God.

Even contemporary psychologists view detachment as a vital link to human growth. William Johnston in his invaluable book, The Still Point, states, "It is an ordinary finding of modern psychology which insists that one can find balanced emotional maturity only by a process of detachment extending its roots into the subliminal regions of the psyche and eliminating subconscious fixations acquired in early periods of life. Detachment, then, is of primary importance for normal human development." Eric Fromm put it this way. Hot air balloon "The aim of life is to be fully born ... some people cannot cut the umbilical cord completely, as it were. They remain symbiotically attached to the mother, father, family, race, status, money, goods, etc.; they never emerge fully as themselves, and they never become fully born."

What has the Psalmist to say of the human condition and the need for detachment in all things? Psalm 90:10 is the sort of prayer that can absorb pain in all its dimensions and transform it into hope: "Our days dwindle under your wrath, our lives are over with a breath -- our life lasts for seventy years, eighty with good health, but they all add up to anxiety and trouble -- over in a trice, and then we are gone!" Later the psalmist adds, "May our future be happy as our past was sad" -- and, "May the sweetness of the Lord be upon us."

No wonder St. Frances Xavier Cabrini could urge her sisters, in a letter sent to them while she was on the road: "Detach yourselves and take on wings."

Who, then, is foolish, and who is wise in times like ours?