There is a charming religious custom that is widespread among Catholic Hispanics but is making its way into the English-speaking world at a fast pace.
It’s called a palanca, a word in Spanish that means “lever.” When a family member or friend leaves to make a religious retreat, we write them a short letter of encouragement that is meant to lift them up toward God, like a lever lifts an object. One of the most consoling moments in a retreat is the time set aside for reading these palancas, sometimes a bag full of them. Invariably there are tears, and opened hearts, as God’s grace works through the knots and difficulties that beset every one of us.
You don’t have to wait for someone you love to make a retreat to write them a palanca. Anyone experiencing a low point in their lives would be moved and lifted by a letter of spiritual accompaniment. If you are wondering what they look like, here is an example — a palanca I recently wrote to my daughter for her senior retreat. We adopted her from China as a toddler.
My Magnificent Girl:
It’s a treat to write you a palanca, because the possibilities are endless. If, in fact, a palanca is a letter of appreciation. It is, in part.
So here is that part: You are my youngest child and one whose presence in my life is a kind of ever-surprising miracle. You simply shouldn’t be here, making me glad with your presence and your smile. There is no simple path from to here from China, from your beginnings to your present, from your baby loneliness to your family that adores you. Living always, since I met you in that big room full of tumbling babies in Chongqing, in the glow of that miracle, I have never gotten used to it.
I have told you this before, but the prettiest thing that has ever happened to me is learning to love you. It was, and is, a romance like that of princesses and knights. It was an adventure, a daring leap, God’s challenge met with trepidation, a promise from the other side of experience, where unlikely things become reality. You beckoned from your crib and I came, like an arrow to the target, flying over the top of the world to find you.
I drove away dragons of doubt and spiders of fear, I fought the hard-hearted ones who told me I was wrong and selfish. I danced away in a dream of you, right into the night sky and landed at your side. I filled my arms with your tender self wrapped in a cheap pink polyester romper. You cried at being touched and kissed, unused to love.
You fulfilled the dreams I didn’t even dare to dream out loud. Your kindness, docility, thoughtfulness, generosity, self-lessness, your calm silences, your expansive moods, your comical streak, your piety and seriousness. All of it charms me and makes me thank God with tears in my eyes. You have been a wild joy, a giver of contentment and a source of gladness. I feast my eyes on you and my heart leaps.
You are laughing at my silliness now, maybe, as you read. But don’t disbelieve me. One day, God willing, you will love like I do, and you will know that everything I have told you here is true.
Here is the other part of the palanca:
Don’t go where the world wants to lead you. The God who made you made you for glorious, clean, shining and noble things. He wants you to be that beautiful thing he envisioned when he first thought of you, back in the beginning of time, when there was no time. Let him make you that, be clay in his hands. The world wants you to be a lump of dirt, and then it wants to toss you on a pile of more dirt.
God is making a gorgeous and stately statue of you, the kind that makes others long to be near you, even just to watch you become. And when he is all done making, and you are all done being made, he will breathe one more drop of Grace on you. And then you will be that Holy Living Saint he intends you to be. This may happen after your death, or before. I don’t know exactly. But I know it will happen, because you will let him. Do let him!
I trust you, and believe in your greatness of spirit. Maybe more than anyone else I know. But I fear for you, because you are young and don’t know how dark the world is, and men’s minds. Keep your innocence and purity, don’t let the dirt of the world touch you, my darling. Don’t let it!
I love you, and pray for you always.
Your mother
