In her poem “To Have Without Holding,” Marge Piercy
reminds us that “Learning to love differently is hard. Love with the hands wide
open, . . .” “It hurts to love wide open,”
she says. “It hurts to thwart the reflexes of grab, of clutch ; to love and let
go again and again. . . , to love consciously,
conscientiously, concretely, constructively. . . , to
have and not to hold, to love with minimized malice, hunger and anger moment by
moment balanced.”
Piercy gives us pause during this month of Elul,
reminding us that change is possible, even when it comes to love. We have the chance, again and again, to free
our grip and love without smothering, without clutching, without grabbing, to
rebalance the give and take and simply be.
True love, of our children, of our partners, of ourselves, of each
other, of God….all these allow for this recalibration of what we expect and
what we give and what we get and how we hold and how we let go and, above all,
of how we love.
Rabbi Jim Bennett
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