October 28, 2026

The Practice Of Letting Go

All great spirituality is about letting go.

Richard Rohr is a Franciscan friar who founded the Center for Action and Contemplation in New Mexico, where he has spent decades counseling people through midlife crises, failure, and loss. He wrote Falling Upward after watching so many people in the second half of life either cling tighter to what they had or finally loosen their grip and find new freedom. The line comes from his argument that every major faith tradition, at its core, is teaching the same lesson: we grow not by adding more but by releasing what we thought we needed. For anyone grieving a person, a job, a season of life, or a version of themselves that no longer exists, Rohr is naming the strange truth that the letting go itself is the spiritual work, not an obstacle to it.