In her short and remarkable life, the musician Eva Cassidy recorded some rollicking versions of old standards. In my favorite, “How Can I Keep From Singing?,” she positively belts out the chorus: “No storm can shake my inmost calm while to this rock I’m clinging; if Love is Lord of heaven and earth, how can I keep from singing?” 

I was belting out that chorus right along with her last week as I tried to puzzle out the difference between holding on and clinging. Maybe this difference doesn’t matter, or at least to other people it might not matter. But steeped in a tradition where the first words of the post-resurrection Jesus to a beloved follower were, “Don’t cling to me,” I have thought a lot about clinging. Or more accurately, not-clinging. 

We all know cling. Staticky sweatpants, plastic wrap, and dog hair all cling. Forget-me-not seeds cling. Burdock burrs super-cling. 

Then there are the big mental clings: wanting our communities to stay the same. Wanting the glacier not to melt, the forests not to burn, loved ones not to die. The world not to blow up. 

I often write about letting go. I do believe that letting go is a fine thing. Not insisting on life going my way, but surrendering to what is: that’s usually a good move. At the very least, it reduces my resentment load. 

What can be harder sometimes is sorting out how best, and when, to hold on. When something I love is gone—the world I grew up in, the forests I treasure, a being who charmed my life—I can use that loss as a way of devaluing the here and now. Nostalgia for the past can poison the present. That is, I think, clinging. 

So how do we hold on to what is good, beautiful, and life-giving without clinging? How do we hold the memory of those beings and places not as a form of nostalgia, but as an inner compass?  

At funerals for the murdered and disappeared in El Salvador, the tradition arose of calling out the names of those who’d been killed. In response to each name, the community responded, “¡Presente!” To call out “¡Presente!” meant that the missing person was present in spirit. To call out “¡Presente!” meant that you were committed to carry on that person’s work in your own life. To call out “¡Presente!” meant that you acknowledged Love, as embodied by that person, as the ultimate reality. Not fear, not death squads: Love.  

This is not clinging. When we lose something or someone, and then commit to live out what we have seen embodied in them—a commitment to kids, to generosity, to justice, to a cool green space to breathe—we are holding on. Their spirit is still present. This form of “¡Presente!” makes it clear: Love is the only reality that counts. 

When Eva Cassidy sings, “No storm can shake my inward calm,” I know she says she’s clinging. But swear to God, if Love is Lord of heaven and earth, then truthfully, she’s not clinging. She’s holding on.