Trust The Heaviness Of Your Life

How surely gravity’s law,
strong as an ocean current,
takes hold of even the smallest thing
and pulls it toward the heart of the world. 

Each thing—
each stone, blossom, child—
is held in place.
Only we, in our arrogance,
push out beyond what we each belong to
for some empty freedom.
If we surrendered
to earth’s intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.

Instead we entangle ourselves
in knots of our own making
and struggle, lonely and confused. 

So, like children, we begin again
to learn from the things,
because they are in God’s heart;
they have never left [God].  

This is what the things can teach us:
to fall,
patiently to trust our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that
before he can fly.

—Rainer Maria Rilke 

I’ve always been a fan of Rilke and his work—especially the poem above, How Surely Gravity’s Law. When I first read this poem a couple of years ago, I remember feeling the weight of his words deep in my body.

This is what the things can teach us: to fall, patiently to trust our heaviness.

I remember gently pressing my fingers across the worn out pages of Letters To A Young Poet and tracing each word with my finger as I slowly read it aloud.

This. Is. What. The Things. Can. Teach. Us: To. Fall. Patiently. To. Trust. Our. Heaviness.

What does it mean to patiently trust our heaviness? Up until this point in my life, I was doing everything I can to let go of the heaviness, or to escape the heaviness. For me, the heaviness that I felt in my life was seen as something was wrong with me, or something needed to be fixed in me—or in my life.

Patiently trust my heaviness. Intellectually I could understand what Rilke was saying, but it didn’t resonate with me—yet.

As I was sitting there that morning reading over the poem several different times, I knew that unanswered question of what does it mean to patiently trust my heaviness was inviting me in and offering me the space to live out the answer.

Last week, I was laying on my yoga mat and breathing when I felt this overwhelming sensation of me sinking into the ground. Or, maybe it was more of an awareness that the ground was holding me. Regardless, I became increasingly aware that the full weight of my body was being held by something outside of myself. I know that it might seem rather silly and trite, but there was something about this moment for me.

I felt so grounded, so rooted.

Tears began to fall as I could feel that insatiable need to be somewhere else in my life, to be further along, the need that has been the source of so much despair and frustration in my life, was slowly beginning to loosen its’ grip on me. Even if it was just for a moment, to not feel the weight of the expectations of what I think my life should look like and the demand to be somewhere further along in my life, was like taking in the air as you stand on the shore of the ocean on a warm spring morning.

Freeing.

As I was talking to Kara about this, it became more aware to me that this moment in my life had come on the other side of giving myself the space and permission to grieve the unmet expectations of what I thought my life would look like when I moved to Los Angeles. It came as I gave myself the permission to trust my heaviness. Not to escape it, or to fix it, but to welcome it into my life. To give it a seat at the table. To get curious about it. To ask it questions. To really recognize and to honor the heaviness.

Last week, I talked about being lost in life and I shared a poem, Lost, by David Wagoner.

In it, he talks about what to do when you’re lost in the woods but how it really is a metaphor for life. He goes on to say that if you’re feeling lost, you first have to stand still because wherever you are is called here. And you must treat it (here) as a powerful stranger. You must ask permission to know it and to be known by it.

There’s so much power in those words. Whether it’s the importance of stillness or the willingness to posture our heart on a seat of honor and humility, I can’t help but to think that this wisdom not only helps us navigate the seasons life when we’re feeling lost, but also when we’re feeling the heaviness of life weighing on us.

Maybe, this is what it looks like to trust our heaviness.

Despite how uncomfortable it might be, we have to treat our heaviness in life the same way. We have to be willing to meet it with stillness. We have to be willing to treat like a powerful stranger and ask permission to know it and be known by it.

Trust the heaviness in your life that it’s leading you somewhere deeper despite it being so uncomfortable.

I’m beginning to learn in my own experience, it’s in the trusting of the heaviness that’s leading me into a deeper, more grounded life—so that I too, can rise up like rooted trees.

I want to leave you today with the contemplative practice of the welcoming prayer. The truth is, to welcome and to let go is one of the most radically loving, faith-filled gestures we can make in each moment of the day—even if it is us welcoming our heaviness. I can’t promise you that the pain of the heaviness will leave easily or quickly. But to welcome it, is in a way, to let go of the idea that it should be anything else then what it is. And, in that letting go frees up a great amount of soul-energy and space that invites in a new way of life to enter.

Welcome, welcome, welcome.

I welcome everything that comes to me today

because I know it’s for my healing.

I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions, persons,

situations, and conditions.

I let go of my desire for power and control.

I let go of my desire for affection, esteem,

approval and pleasure.

I let go of my desire for survival and security.

I let go of my desire to change any situation,

condition, person or myself.

I open to the love and presence of God and

God’s action within. Amen