Let It Be

am, is, are, was, were, been, being

Book of Genesis

Written by Kei Miller

Suppose there was a book full of only the word,
let – from whose clipped sound all things begin: fir
and firmament, feather, the first whale – and suppose

we could scroll through its pages every day
to find and pronounce a Let meant only for us –
we would stumble through the streets with open books,

eyes crossed from too much reading; we would speak
in auto-rhyme, the world would echo itself – and still
we’d continue in rounds, saying let and let and let

until even silent dreams had been allowed.

The little word “let” is potent enough to make the whole world drunk—to make the whole world.

Someone recently helped me make the connection between God’s “Let there be” in Genesis and Mary’s “Let it be” in Luke (Genesis 1.3, Luke 1.38). I had never seen it before, but now I cannot unsee it. It is crowding out so many lesser things—this clipped little word of allowance. let.

When God Let there be, the world moved from chaos to ordered creation as the floodgates of possibility gave way before the power of the word. When Mary Let it be, procreation found an entirely other avenue and the Messiah entered the womb and the world and set the whole of salvation and reCreation in motion. When I Let things be, it isn’t so much that I strain to make something, do something, or be something, as it is that I stop striving altogether and submit, surrender, and allow what already groans to be to be.

Grammerly tells me that “the irregular verb to be is the most complicated of all the English verbs” as well as the most used. And I can’t help but instantly think of the name of our God as one of those forms: I am. God is “Let it be.” The One Who gives permission for all the things that are not to go ahead and shame the things that are (1 Corinthians 1.27-31). Maybe we’ve made “to be” more complicated than is necessary? Maybe God waits simply for permission to be all that and a bag of chips?

And this makes my nose sting with those inside-the-body tears, because we have this Ruler unlike rulers. The gods waltz into the room, onto the stage, and demand servitude and use power to get bigger and please themselves. This God waits. This One requests permission to enter—to become small enough, ever lower and more gentle and smaller so as to fit in a womb, in a manger, in a body-cathedral.

“Will you Let?”

Yes, LORD, I’ll allow it.

Dig an artesian well in me that springs up to eternal life and ushers in even forgotten, silent dreams. You’re allowed here.

So be it.