Sometimes just living life feels like clinging to that last slippery rock on the edge of what seems to be a great waterfall, in a driving rainstorm. You can’t see past the edge where the water drops off but you can hear the crashing water, so loud it almost drowns out the thunderous storm swirling above your head and conspiring to help push you over that edge.
Between the rock and the safety of the shores on either side, everything that passes heads earnestly over that edge. A myriad of creations, not thinking, not struggling, but you watch as that log slides just past the edge, dips its root end down and its arms reach once again to the sky, briefly celebrating the life it lived. Then it quickly disappears beneath the horizon that is the waterfalls’ edge into the frenzy of the nothingness below. You know nothing of that “nothingness” except your fear of it and you wonder “if that great old man of the forest succumbed so easily, what can I do?”
Your little hands clasped about the rock, while the rest of your body is pulled and tugged towards the inevitable and in a moment of terror you feel the base of the rock loosen just a little. You know any control you think youhave over this decision is running out. Your hands can’t hold to the rock forever, you are only human. Even so, if faced with an eternity of just holding on, is that what you want?
The rock you cling to is battling the rushing water rising from the storm, beaten by debris and pulled by your anchor, it cannot hold you forever. The storm that rages above will subside but others will follow and some will be even fiercer. And on either side, even the shores that cannot be reached may have meadows but surely they also have their own dark nights, hungry beasts and perilous cliffs.
So the path that is laid before you is to let go and trust. All the frightful sounds you hear ahead of you are undefined except by the stories in your own head. You have all the power to let go of the stories you have told yourself about those unknown sounds ahead and let them be what they are, which is the sound of God’s story. And the Universe is asking you to trust and be a part of that Great Story. Like the beautiful tree had shown as it flowed ahead of you and into God’s story, celebrating what it had become. Because once you find the peace to let go of the certainty ,hat only exist in your head, and flow with the waterfall, what is on the other side becomes a story between you and God.
– P.Ciavardone
Copyright 2013. Face the Mountain. All rights reserved
Your shadow is determined by the light. If the sun is low the shadow is long. If the sun is rising that shadow falls behind you. If the sun is setting the shadow looms in front of you. When the sun is high in the sky your shadow is below but at one with you. It is in balance.
