This poem significantly alters the way I'm seeing my life.
Falling is an apt metaphor for how things feel these days.
I believe this canyon of grief is something we each experience
in different depths and contours in our own particular way...
mostly alone and mostly unseen.
"In fact, I am not certain I am done with my falliing.
But I do know now falling if not something to be feared."
For someone with a severe fear of heights, I'm dubious;
but willing to hear her out given what she's been through.
"This is not about flying. It's about falling. About meeting
the gravity and feeling its force and letting it carry me
in ways I have never let myself be carried."
This is a line the moves me out of my tight confines
into the spaciousness of what I do not know;
what I can not know. It opens a door to realms
beyond my understanding where somehow, impossibly
all of this translates into something
tender and mighty and amazing.
"...the canyon of grief is just another name
for living the fullest life."
Why am I so prone to avoiding grief if this is true?
I suppose because its natural to draw back from pain,
to pull away from hurt, to detour around sharp and slippery rocks,
to find another route when the road is caved in.
It's understandable to avoid what feels like it will undo us.
Like falling into an abyss with no visible bottom.
"The reward of falling is to feel how grace falls with us
as if holding our hand, like a teacher, like a friend."
This is where everything gathers...
where we are reminded grace is with us...we are not alone.
Goodness is present and we are here together;
no matter how swiftly we are descending,
no matter how terrified and blindly enraged we feel.
This matters.
We matter.
I am holding onto grace with
every fiber of my being.
Namaste
