RICHARD A. GOODLING is an ordained United Church of Christ minister whose Ph.D. is in clinical psychology. In addition to being Professor of Pastoral Psychology at the Divinity School at Duke University, he is the Director and a Staff Counselor with the Pastoral Care and Counseling Institute of Durham-Chapel Hill, Inc. His sermon Letting Go was preached at a chapel service in the divinity school. In it he speaks pastorally and artistically of the necessity of surrendering our cherished and familiar ways of being in order to be open to the new life and freedom for the future that the Christian faith calls us to.

Freedom

Lord, I want to be free

free to love

black, brown, red, yellow

Even white ... even white.

Free to love strangers, foreigners,

outcasts, status-seekers,

Even my neighbor ... even my …