taking the leap
a poetic invitation to take a shovel to the compost, and notice what is warm and real and changing
Here I go on, is it mindlessly?
Trying to survive in a world contrived
having found myself surrounded by things that keep me
plateaued in a panic in an effort to maintain them
what do you think about all that busywork?
giving up growth in order to stay comfortable?
It’s a funny conflict, being
drawn to a spiritual path,
the expansion of awareness,
but feeling bound —no— hindered?
by a life that —I think— has
made myriad attempts to remove comfort from me at all costs.
this has thus kept me fixated on not losing comfort,
thus has kept me, confined by comfort.
can you see the conundrum?
out beyond comfort…
that’s where the
growth is— out beyond comfort.
full stop, says my brain, bristling at any unfamiliar possibility,
which could only be unsafe. you won’t survive. it won’t work.
that same brain tries to keep me where I am
—plateaued in an eddy of sameness swirling,
but the boat is nudging out into the water
and won’t be stopped.
a deeper knowing speaks up:
out beyond your comfort zone you are
held by something far bigger.
can you lean into that?
the current continues to nudge.
I hesitate. For a long while.
Leaning feels like falling.
“Take the leap” a mentor once said.
And I did everything I could
to amass a sense of security,
which then crumbled in my face.
Now I think I get it.
the leap comes from
rock-bottom, where you finally find solid ground
and look around
and see it for what it is,
and how you are needed here
the leap is discerning from all the shoulds and inputs
of other minds
and listening to the one truth inside of you
the leap is laying down your walls but not
your capacity to be a vessel
for a love that is eternal,
and can nourish many lifetimes
beyond your own small one
the leap is opening your heart to the world
and the world to your heart, simultaneously
the leap is sometimes hardly more than
“a journey of one inch,
very arduous and humbling and joyful,
by which we arrive at the ground at our own feet,
and learn to be at home”
as Wendell Berry wrote in his poem “The Journey”.
the leap could be noticing that gnarled tree on your street,
or that dandelion growing through the cracks of the pavement
as if for the first time
and witnessing them to be as precious as the majestic places
we have placed fences around to protect.
question, did these humble beings lose their sacredness
when we fenced that other, shinier place?
the leap could be noticing what has been forgotten
or trampled upon, and tending to it,
making it sacred, too.
As Rivka Grace Savitri said so eloquently,
“The way you alchemize a soulless world
into a sacred world
is by treating everyone as if they are sacred
until the sacred in them remembers”
—this includes the small things growing at your feet as well as your local post clerk.
the leap is to be raw in a world that wants to
boil all the goddamn nutrients out of you,
sterilize and standardize and mass-produce and commodify you,
and keep you separate from that sacred dirt.
the leap is to choose to die every day and be born anew
and keep composting what needs to go
so what needs to be brought in, can grow
the leap is to arrive at the wound with
tears instead of bandaids, and feel the grief
instead of suppressing it
the leap is putting my pen to this page
to remind you why I’m still here.
the leap is to take good care of where you are, no matter where you are, and begin from there, as many times as you need to.
With parting words from Rumi,
“Your grief for what you’ve lost lifts a mirror up to where you are bravely working. Expecting the worst, you look, and instead, here’s the joyful face you’ve been wanting to see. Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralysed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birdwings”
I implore you,
keep going.
