by Charles “Tom” Brown
Copyright 2007
By falling down and getting up, we have the whole story of being human. Try as we will to escape or transcend the imperfection of being a spirit on earth, it is through this wonderful friction that we come to know ourselves.
Falling down is how we learn and many of us have earned a master’s degree in this exercise. The strange truth is that, while we are falling down and being battered by existence outwardly, we are, in spite of ourselves, growing inwardly the way weather causes vegetables to grow. Actually, we have little control over our time on earth, other than the degree to which we choose to root ourselves and stand tall before the wind and rain and sun.
Getting up is not about conquering an opponent or circumstance, but about not getting stuck in life’s innumerable valleys. The process of getting up translates to being present and staying open. These are the efforts that cause us to ripen. These are the silences, which, if entered, will sing. We are touched the deepest when we can turn ourselves over to life like a song to be sung or something planted waiting to grow.
Things will always break apart and come together. Yet, in our pain, we often lose sight of their power to transform our lives. Each cocoon must break so the next butterfly can be. So many sheddings. So many wings.
It is our curse and our blessing to fall and get up so many times. But in this is the chief work of love: to comfort each other each time we fall and to be the missing piece of what we need to learn again and again.
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