Wednesday, February 25th, 2009
For the most part we avoid falling. It is unsure, and it might hurt. So much better, we believe, to simply stay on your feet. But then you are walking, perfectly sensibly along, and the ground falls out from under with you, no matter what you’ve done to stay on the “straight-and-narrow”…whatever we have done to avoid life, and risk, and feeling too much. And then we fall, and unlike in our world of gravity, in the realm of the soul we can fall for a very long time. We can forget what solid ground even feels like, or we can end up falling into the sea…and learning to swim.
As we fall we may not even know what is happening. We may simply wonder why the ground in our lives has become so unreliable…not knowing it is only air. If we realize we are falling, we may panic, deciding for sure that the impact will crush us against the painful rock-bottom of our fears.
I landed recently. And I remembered. I remembered the cushion of grace you hit just before the earth comes up to meet you. I remembered that we always, always, land on our feet. If we haven’t landed on our feet yet, we simply haven’t finished falling yet. And when we have fallen, and ultimately landed on our feet enough times, we get very good at it. We begin to relax more as we sail through space toward some unknown destination…we close our eyes…and spread our arms like wings…and surrender.
We become so good at falling that we accept our true nature, which is always falling in love, over and over again. We fall in love with morning, with open flowers and shadow playing with light…with laughter and even tears…with other eyes looking into yours with recognition, with moonglow, with warm water and cold night air and the smell of spices and earth and rain…with music that speaks to your soul and with the words that flow out of your own elegant mouth…with everything. We even fall in love with the places we don’t feel love, and then they too are filled with the space we given ourselves to be free. And then love is there too. Then we are free, falling.
Trust the fall. It will take you somewhere good. You will end up falling into love, and more love.
Love, Jennifer
