Detachment centered in love

Perhaps few things are more misunderstood then this idea of detachment.  People sometimes think that it means not caring: it does, but, as we have seen, only if you add that it means caring too.  The detached man will care more for things then the avaricious and rapacious man; but he will care in a different way.  He will not clutch and cling, and self-worship; his possessions, his desires, his attachments, will not fetter his freedom and destroy his power of love, will not forever be an anxiety and an agitation of spirit.  His is the prayer of the poet,

Teach us to care and not to care,
Teach us to sit still…

And so he learns to be a peace.

Father Gerald Vann ‘The Divine Pity’

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