“But here you are at the edge/of the shore, the shallow waves/washing over your feet/taking the sand you stand on away and suddenly you wonder/if all the ground beneath you is disappearing.” (1)
Listening to a new release by vocalist Norah Jones called “Tryin’ To Keep It Together” , I was struck by how we humans, especially in times of crisis, work so hard to do just that, to keep things from unraveling, dissipating, dissolving, disintegrating. Our health, our mental state, our faith, our close relationships, our families, our businesses and institutions, our communities, our country. While losing “control” can be ecstatic, it is often frightening, even life-threatening. For the most part, we humans need to maintain some kind of mastery to keep things predictable, understandable, or simply from falling out from under us. This makes sense given that our ability to “reason” and intentionally manipulate our environment is one of our species’ key survival mechanisms.
“Trying to keep it together” is a highly adaptive skill, one that pulls us as individuals, our relationships and support structures, through potentially destructive times. We join with others for the purpose of sustaining something that serves us. But perhaps there are times when we try too hard to hold on to what we know, what seems safe, or at least familiar. Times when we need to slip out of the box to see what’s outside, to re-think and innovate. Sometimes disintegration is called for so, with a fresh perspective, we can re-integrate into a healthier, more fully developed whole.
Maybe a pattern in our lives, a relationship, an institution is not serving the deeper good. Maybe we need to let sobs of grief and loss momentarily overwhelm us to release its grip on our hearts. Allowing the free-fall and floating as we let go into the unknown can be disorienting and scary; it requires a little faith and, when possible, “a little help from our friends”.
“Daughter, believe/me, when you tire on the long thrash/to your island, lie up and survive./As you float now, where I held you/and let go, remember when fear/cramps your heart what I told you:/lie gently and wide to the light-year/stars, lie back, and the sea will hold you.” (2)
We must be wise and discerning to distinguish between times to “keep it together” and times to “let it unravel and rebuild”. But as Rilke says of falling, “Even a bird has to do that before she can fly.” (3)
“After the panic subsides you stand there/looking around./Everything is fresh,/colors are vivid,/you can smell scents,/even subtle ones,/and your hearing is sharp. … /Everywhere you turn there is something new/and the space around you/holds you gently/as it spills out and becomes/a part of the expanding world.”(1)
“Do you know how the caterpillar/turns? /Do you remember/what happens inside a cocoon?/You liquefy./There in the thick black of your self-spun womb,/ void as the moon before waxing,/ you melt/ (as Christ did/for three days/in the tomb)/conceiving in impossible darkness/the sheer/inevitability/of wings.” (4)
(1) Threshhold by Newton Smith
(2) First Lesson by Philip Booth
(4) Gravity’s Law by Ranier Maria Rilke
(5) In Impossible Darkness by Kim Rosen