How surely gravity's law, Instead we entangle ourselves
strong as an ocean current, in knots of our own making
takes hold of even the smallest thing and struggle, lonely and confused.
and pulls it toward the heart of the world.
Each thing--- So, like children, we begin again
each stone, blossom,child-- to learn from the things,
is held in place. because they are in God's heart;
Only we, in our arrogance, they have never left him.
push out beyond what we each belong to
for some empty freedom.
This is what the things can teach us:
If we surrendered to fall,
to earth's intelligence patiently to trust our heaviness.
we could rise up rooted, like trees Even a bird has to do that.
before he can fly
Rilke, Love Poems to God.
We do not like to fail. Even when we are 'entangled in knots of our own making', we rail against the fairness of events, who else is to blame, who needs to be punished. We do not want to accept that the web we are caught in was made by ourselves.
In the Real World, failure is threaded through every moment of existence. For each living thing that reaches maturity there are unimaginable numbers who are churned through the maw of life. It dispassionately balances the natural world and that still includes us. When we respect and honor its role in our lives as a teacher, we step into a life that is full of meaning . Hardships and suffering become trans formative experiences instead of nonsensical and random events. We learn compassion, gain understanding, develop trust and discover hope. Opening ourselves to accept the reality and value of failure in our lives transforms our hearts, turns us away from the exhausting, deforming belief we are everything. In the year ending we can all look back on failures in our lives. When we do, perhaps we can look deeper at those times, past the hurt and sorrow, the sting of social standing and consider what we received. It isn't easy work. The struggle is an essential part of the gift. But the goal remains the prize. We become real, and our eyes turn toward God.
