Developing An Appetite For Groundlessness

"The 'secret' of life that we are all looking for is just this: to develop through sitting and daily life practice the power and courage to return to that which we have spent a lifetime hiding from, to rest in the bodily experience of the present moment--even if it is a feeling of being humiliated, of failing, of abandonment, of unfairness." --Charlotte Joko Beck

Yesterday was a breaking point. We all have them: that moment of realizing that what you imagined as a ground in your life, a constant you depended on, trusted and held, has rapidly dissolved. Once holding, you now discover, like Creeley, that "Everything is water / if you look long enough." How long can you cup water?

There is a relief in this. With loss, comes grief. And grief is a plum line dropped, a weight dangled to the center of your gravity. It has always been there, stored in the body, hung up in the marrow, knotted by the way you have muscled through. Unexpected grief frees it, lets it sway again unobstructed. You must feel it now, threading through the breath, and can follow where it leads. Or, you can step around it, try to move away. You can frantically re-bind it. You can go buy a six-pack of beer.

I woke early this morning to find a dove perched on my balcony railing. It bobbed and worried when I opened the door, but stayed put. I watched and admired for awhile. Later, when the dove was gone, I saw a fledgling below, huddled under a few tired Birds of Paradise plants. I stood right above it, looking down, watching it tremble, and soon discovered the adult perched close in the acacia tree. Then, much to my surprise, I located another pair in a nearby branch: fledgling and adult. The parent picked tenderly at the young one's down. The thin branch swayed under their motions. I watched them hold to that height all morning.

When I returned home, early evening, the doves were gone. No young ones, no adults. Had they made their way into the foliage where I couldn't see? And what of the fallen bird?

Treacherous, to try and fling oneself out into groundlessness. But what an ordinary miracle to have a dove perched on the iron railing of my balcony, nurturing, watchful. By grief, we can learn to be both parent and child, protective, protected and afraid, a tender groomer, a flier, a faller, a waiter for courage. The line leads us there. And the weight, I suspect, is no weight at all, but a lightness we have tightened around like a fist by the many strategies of fear.

This moment of heightened grief is here because I need it. Relax. Sit and listen. If I have reason to suffer, then I also gain a teacher. What has slipped through my fingers waters the geraniums. Isn't that a Noble Truth?

"A man of supple
yielding manner
might, too, discover
ways of water." --R. Creeley