Gravity's Law

How surely gravity’s law,
strong as an ocean current,
takes hold of even the strongest 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 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 him.
This is what the things teach us:
to fall,
patiently trusting our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that
before he can fly.
-Rainer Maria Rilke

Rilke's wisdom for today

"we must hold to what is difficult"

and 

"try to love the questions themselves"

here's a question:

Where is the line between witness and participant? Is there a line? Boundaries, for me right now, are so blurred. I'm feeling either crazy or enlightened, and I don't know if I believe in enlightenment in the "ascension to a higher plane" sense. 

Well, I wanted cathartic and here I am. 

the whole wave of the world is crashing into me and I am saturated in unfallen tears for bearing witness to the immensity of beauty and pain, and beauty in pain, and pain in beauty of life. Of living. Of hardship in its reality. 

phew.

And then all I can think is

"damnit Alex, you are just way too serious all the time."

can I change?

can I hold a bridge with my life between levity and weighted reality?

can I walk between them freely, and without guilt?

can I do so in an age with so much chaos and suffering and pain?

is that my duty?

or shall I think of it as something less grave than a duty?

an honor? a joy?

 a joy to know the extremes of life and look across the chasm between with reverence? 

even that seems serious... 

phew...