Hello

A poem about saying goodbye

Wanderer from Resplendent City by Nicholas Roerich

“So then, brothers and sisters, we are obligated, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh— for if you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs: heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if we in fact suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him. I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.”

Romans 8:12-18, NRSVUE

Hello
After Romans 8:12-25

I hate saying goodbye—
it's a word I wish
didn't exist or ever needed to be said.

O how I would rather
enjoy everything
and have the best
of all worlds!

But the life before me
 consists of many necessary goodbyes:

goodbye striving;
goodbye me-first;
goodbye people pleasing;
goodbye regretful habits
and self-sabotage;
goodbye transactional relationships;
goodbye meaningless dreams;
goodbye comfort;
goodbye false safety.

I say goodbye
because the Spirit pulls me
forward and whispers in faithful love:
"Everything is found on the cross, 
everything consists of dying on it, 
there is no other road to life."

The Spirit teaches me an even better word
after goodbye:

"Hello."

Hello death;
Hello resurrection;
Hello union;
Hello new family;
Hello true riches;

Hello new me;
Hello new you.

---

—

Hello again, it’s been a few weeks since my last poem. My family and I have successfully relocated to the Georgia-Tennessee border near Chattanooga, and we are enjoying the new scenery and working through all the ups and downs of beginning a new chapter.

—

Why did I emphasize the idea of saying goodbye in this poem? Paul didn’t know the Roman church, or churches, when he wrote this letter, but he chose to remind those Christians to stay the course of their new life in Christ, and not to give in to their previous destructive tendencies.

But let’s be honest, we all compromise—we see the heights and depths of love to which we have been called, and then we have to, you know, live in a world that isn’t always hungry, on the surface, for that way of living, and so the Gospel becomes our background music, instead of the main song within.

We often compromise because we don’t want to suffer. But what I’ve learned recently is that no matter what, suffering finds us. And the more we try to avoid it and get it away, the more we find it. Compromise looks like living many lives, being different people in different situations. It’s fragmented and contorted. We can either suffer for holy and worthy endeavors, or we can suffer by pursuing everything else. Either way, we can’t escape it.

If we are going to turn toward a more faithful and enriching life, we need to say goodbye to certain things. When I look at my own life, I see a lot of hesitation, and I worry about failing and letting people down. But if I don’t say goodbye to those ideas and worries, my fears will become my reality. So this is the dynamic: we don’t want to suffer, so we do all in our power not to suffer, and then we create our own realities that lead nowhere good.

Leave a comment below if you think being human is fun!

The Christian life is the constant practice of saying goodbye to the fake and false visions of life before us and turning to say yes to Christ. It’s all so, so hard. I wish saying goodbye wasn’t part of Christ-formed life, but it is. I wish failure weren’t part of growth. Every genuine spiritual pursuit requires goodbyes. And it’s humbling.

But I think what Paul is trying to do in Romans is not just talk about the things we need to rid ourselves of and say goodbye to; he’s trying to help us see what new things we get to welcome and what is worth suffering for.

Like the painting above of the man on pilgrimage, he had to say goodbye to his old home, his old habits, his old life patterns, but on the journey, he is forced to lighten the heavy load he carries. Eventually, he gets to say hello to a new life. Even if he returns to his former home, he’s changed and grounded in God.

This new life in Christ is nearer than we might think and is rooted in practices that aren’t attractive or showworthy, but it is filled with overflowing goodness.

What does Jesus want for all of us? New and abundant life. It's going to require some difficult goodbyes, but it is worth it. I’m saying all of this to remind myself just as much, if not more, as I am reminding you.

Lastly, the line in this week’s poem, "Everything is found on the cross, everything consists of dying on it, there is no other road to life." Is an adapted quote from Thomas à Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ, book 2, chapter 12: “Of the Royal Road of the Holy Cross.” Translated by William C. Creasy.

See any typos in this post? It’s proof that these are my real thoughts and words and not generated by AI/LLMs.