Robert Frost once described a poem as a “momentary stay against confusion.”
Was this what Francis was doing on some level in the Canticle, as he dared to name beauty at a time when was dying? Consider the beauty that flowed out of his heart in this frail moment of letting go. As Darleen Pryds writes in her 2025 St. Anthony Messenger article, “Living the Canticle of the Creatures,” the Canticle was really the culmination of not just letting go in his final days but also a spirituality of letting go he leaned into more and more throughout his entire life.
Dr. Pryds writes: “Here’s the simple (but not necessarily easy) truth of the Franciscan way: Letting go of attachments opens space for deeper awareness and visceral sense of the beauty all around us. This letting go is not a superficial acceptance of life’s events. Instead, it’s a deep awareness and acceptance of all that is interconnected.” Just as in this episode we explore the Canticle as poetry, in our episode with Dr. Pryds, we explored the Canticle as the fruition of an entire life of learning to let go. Dr. Pryds continues, “The closeness with the Divine came through years of letting go, not just of material things, but of deeper personal attachments: his expectations and assumptions of how things should be, his privilege of social standing even within his order, and his control over his own body.”
How are we being invited to let go in our lives? Is not this notion of kenosis, self-emptying, the very hallmark of Christ’s life as well as the Trinity’s creative action from the beginning of time? Could poetry or metaphor help us venture deeper into this mystery of letting go, and, in doing so, like Francis, give birth to a healing song to be sung?
—from Franciscan Media’s Franciscan Spirit Podcast
with host Stephen Copeland, featuring Greg Friedman, OFM
