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I apologize that the above is so abstract and likely unhelpful.
I have spent so long saying no to life and trying to fix it. Trying to make life conform to how I thought it should be. Following the rules in hope of a future reward… so never being in the moment. Judging, measuring and getting it wrong more often then not, Its exhausting.
The challenge today is staying engaged with life and avoiding the trap of indifference. To say Yes, and lean on Yes even when I am uncertain.You may find the book, “Learning to Fall: The Blessings of an Imperfect Life” by Philip Simmons, helpful.
Philip found away to say Yes to life and engage it even as he was dying.
Now I find myself in late August, with the nights cool and the crickets thick in the fields. Already the first blighted leaves glow scarlet on the red maples. It’s a season of fullness and sweet longings made sweeter now by the fact that I can’t be sure I’ll see this time of the year again…
We have all suffered, and will suffer, our own falls. The fall from youthful ideals, the waning of physical strength, the failure of a cherished hope, the loss of our near and dear, the fall into injury or sickness, and late or soon, the fall to our certain ends. We have no choice but to fall, and little say as to the time or the means.
Perhaps, however, we do have some say in the manner of our falling. That is, perhaps we have a say in matters of style. As kids we all played the game of leaping from a diving board or dock, and before hitting the water striking some outrageous or goofy pose: axe-murderer, Washington crossing the Delaware, rabid dog. Maybe it comes to no more than this. But I’d like to think that learning to fall is more than merely a matter of posing, more than an opportunity to play it for laughs. In fact, I would have it that in the way of our falling we have the opportunity to express our essential humanity…
Here is where we go wrong. For at its deepest level’s life is not a problem, but a mystery. The distinction, which I borrow from the philosopher Gabriel Marcel, is fundamental: problems are to be solved, true mysteries are not. Personally, I wish I could have learned this lesson more easily—without, perhaps, having to give up my tennis game. But each of us finds his or her own way to mystery. At one time or another, each of us confronts an experience so powerful, bewildering, joyous, or terrifying that all our efforts to see it as a “problem” are futile. Each of us is brought to the cliff’s edge. At such moments we can either back away in bitterness or confusion, or leap forward into mystery. And what does mystery ask of us? Only that we be in its presence, that we fully, consciously, hand ourselves over. That is all, and that is everything. We can participate in mystery only by letting go of solutions. This letting go is the first lesson of falling, and the hardest….
We are all—all of us—falling. We are all, now, this moment, in the midst of that descent, fallen from heights that may now seem only a dimly remembered dream, falling toward a depth we can only imagine, glimpsed beneath the water’s surface shimmer. And so let us pray that if we are falling from grace, dear G_d let us also fall with grace, to grace. If we are falling toward pain and weakness, let us also fall toward sweetness and strength. If we are falling toward death, let us also fall toward life.
Though I run this site, it is not mine. It's ours. It's not about me. It's about us. Your stories and your wisdom are just as meaningful as mine. 