safe landing
Friday, April 3, 2009 at 9:23 AM 
Moving toward my morning meditative routine – candle, music, journal…I chose a play list I did not recognize called, Prayer. My husband discovered this music by a Native American artist named Douglas Spotted Eagle. My journalling began with the words transition, transformation and trapezes. Life lately feels like that space just before you really let go and fling yourself into the air. I am reminded of my skydiving adventure just before stepping out of the plane. I clung to the door and bowed my head in frenzied prayer. It is that place just before you let go. You know it’s coming. You know you have to let go or you will forever regret it. I had no choice really, but to release my fingers and fling myself into the unknown. It seems that in order for life to keep moving forward that is exactly what I must do: let go, trust the unknown, and pray for a safe landing.
My writing traveled through many transitions as it so often does until I landed on that old topic of having compassion for myself. I am excellent at having compassion for others (most of the time), but one particular liminal space – the space 'in between' of loving my teenager and really disliking her a lot – keeps getting in my way. My anger and resentment rise. The classic words of a mother ascend in my throat, but not quite out of my mouth: “I’ve done so much for you. How can you not appreciate me?” And then I get mad at myself for even thinking that way and then she acts maddeningly teenager-ish and I get mad at her, but more myself (‘cuz I have compassion for her) and the cycle continues…
So, I kept writing and did a little reading and landed here: “…the quest both to understand oneself and finally accept oneself was a key journey for me…” I felt like God had a bullhorn to my ear. But, I didn’t really want to stay there and listen so I kept moving and opted to look once again at the Merton prayer I passed over last night:
"Be still
Listen to the stones of the wall.
Be silent, they try
To speak Your
Name.
Listen To the living walls.
Who are you?
Who
Are you? Whose
Silence are you?"
And so I chose to be silent and still. The music played softly in the background. The candle quietly burned across the room. I considered compassion for me. My mind drifted. I gently invited it back. I found myself following the rhythm of a drum. The call of the silence. The stones of the earth speaking to me. Somewhere in there, “my name" was spoken. I "understood and accepted." I moved a little closer to myself.
The name of the song I had never before heard? Coming Home.
How might things be different for you if you let go of the trapeze and flung yourself into the unknown? Do you expect a safe landing or do you assume you will crash & burn?
p.s. After writing this post, I wanted to give credit to Douglas Spotted Eagle. Here is one of the links I found. He is a skydiver!!! Coincidence? Synchronicity? God stuff?
p.p.s. Here's another one. Check out enCouragingBliss: Return to your Garden of Eden. It's yet another way of Coming Home.
soul collage by lucy
God, Journey, Lent, soul collage
Reader Comments (5)
Lucy,
Very nice post. Your emotional back and forth with the teen feels so familiar and I haven't had teens of my own for years! Isn't that a lovely comfort to know that you'll never forget that back and forth.....
Letting go of the trapeze?..Well, you know that I've let get of a few in the last couple of years - let's see
1. I don't understand, can't read and can't write poetry
2. What do people blog about anyway?
3. Maybe I'll take up painting again:)
Letting go is liberating! Let's hear it for free-falling! (And no, I'm not interested in a duo free-fall from a plane!) Maybe your brother would like that:)
Funny thing... yesterday I was reflecting in my thoughts and journal about my own reluctance to let go. And also how I needed to embrace stillness as part of that process.
Then I listened to a sermon about Jesus in Gethsemane and realised that in the stillness that he created for himself (in all the mania that was surrounding him in those last days on earth) he found God's will and embraced it - fully and sacrificially.
How far short I fall! But I'll keep trying.
SS--when you make such adamant statements, you might want to consider what that's all about :-) remember "letting go is liberating!"
xoxxo
ER--that's all any of us can do, huh? keep trying...even when we fall short of the next trapeze bar, grace seems to catch us!
L - isn't that what I said?....:) Mind reading is so hard for me.
xoxox
SS-yep, that's what you said and you also followed it with a very adamant statement (about not literally free-falling) :-)