“Tired of Clinging” by Richard Bach
Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great crystal river. The current of the river swept silently over them all - young and old, rich and poor, good and evil, the current going its own way, knowing only its own crystal self.
Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the twigs and rocks at the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life, and resisting the current was what each had learned from birth.
But one creature said at last, 'I am tired of clinging. Though I cannot see it with my eyes, I trust that the current knows where it is going. I shall let go, and let it take me where it will. Clinging, I shall die of boredom.'
The other creatures laughed and said, 'Fool! Let go, and that current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the rocks, and you shall die quicker than boredom!'
But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go, and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks.
Yet in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more.
And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried, 'See a miracle! A creature like ourselves, yet he flies! See the Messiah, come to save us all!'
And the one carried in the current said, 'I am no more Messiah than you. The river delights to lift us free, if only we dare let go. Our true work is this voyage, this adventure.'
But they cried the more, 'Saviour!' all the while clinging to the rocks, and when they looked again he was gone, and they were left alone making legends of a Saviour.
By Richard Bach, from "Illusions"
I was hit by a falling conker the other day whilst out in the park. Do not worry I didn’t think that the sky was falling in. That said neither did I make any life changing scientific discoveries either. It was neither a moment of terror, nor was it discovery. I was though transported back to childhood and fun autumnal games that we often played. Games folk all over the land and in others played, as they did in previous and current generations too. I enjoyed watching a group of children with parents and grandparents collecting conkers the other day.
I have been watching autumn these last few weeks, watching the leaves fall from the trees. I was out the other day when I and a friend noticed a what looked like a school teacher taking notes of the trees in the park. We wondered what he was doing. A few days later we saw a group of school children doing the same thing. I never asked them exactly what they were doing, but I did enjoy the attention the paid to the trees in the park. It has helped me pay closer attention the nature of the park that Molly and I enjoy every day.
Living spiritually alive is very much about paying attention. Last week I mentioned that Simone Weil saw attention as a contemplative practice, through which we reap life’s deepest rewards. She saw attention as the rarest form of generosity. It is through attention that we open up to Grace. Attention as she saw it is something way beyond the mere will, which she saw as graceless. For Weil attention is an opening, like prayer, that is full of Grace. It is through attention that we are touched by the majesty and beauty of life, it is how we live spiritually alive.
I am someone who attempts to practise what they preach. Yes of course I do not do this perfectly but I do at least try. As I have said before in order to live spiritually alive we need to increase our sensitivity to life. This begins by paying attention, being alive to everything, fully embracing everything and giving yourself fully to it.
As I said I was reminded of autumnal games the other. One such being “The falling leaf game”.
The game goes something like this; you look at the trees and watch for when the leaves begin to fall. As you see one falling you attempt to catch the leaf before it hits the ground. This is no easy task, although it doesn’t sound too challenging. After all it’s just a leaf, it has no mind of its own and gravity should surely bring it down safely into your hands. Well apparently not. It seems that there are other forces at work, namely the wind. It is virtually impossible to catch the leaves as they fall because they are constantly blown off course by sudden and unpredictable gusts of wind.
Isn’t life like this, beautiful but unpredictable. The leaves rarely fall directly into our hands. How often are they blown off course just as we are about to catch them.
The falling leaves can teach us so much about the spiritual life and spiritual living. They remind me of another mistake we often make. Yes, we often want to rush through things and wish they were over therefore failing to truly experience the gift of the moment. That said we can often do something which inhibits the moment equally. How many of us want to cling on to what we are experiencing right now. David Bumbaugh captures this beautifully in the following meditative poem “Dancing in the wind”
“Dancing in the wind” David Bumbaugh
Except for a few stubborn holdouts
The tree outside my window
Is bare of leaves.
The wind,
This October morning,
Worries those few remaining leaves,
Pulling them this way,
twisting them that way,
tugging at them
until, one by one,
exhausted by the ceaseless effort to hang on,
they go dancing in the wind.
As they waltz past my window,
The stubbornness has left them
And they are finally free.
What is it about living things
That we expend so much energy resisting the inevitable,
Hanging on to what is already gone,
Hoping to sustain a season
Into times that are unreasonable,
Clinging to old habits
Despite the pain and discomfort?
Why are we so afraid to dance in the wind?
Why are we so afraid to dance in the wind? It’s a good question. By clinging to things, whether that be people, possessions, seasons, situations, prestige, appearance, beliefs, disbeliefs, feelings, we fail to experience life fully. We block ourselves from experiencing the full gift of life. We become like the creatures in the story we heard earlier, clinging on but not fully experiencing life. They would rather die of boredom than risk letting go and trust in the current. And then one brave one lets go and they simply mock it as it crashes against the rocks and suffers the pain of freedom until it learns the dance of the current. Still, they are afraid though to let go and experience the freedom themselves. They want their messiah to do it for them or they merely want to spin stories of his journey rather than seeing him as the example and letting go themselves and experiencing the freedom of the current.
The spiritual life, living spiritually alive, is about increasing our sensitivity to reality. This begins by simply paying attention. By lingering for a moment, the imperfect, unfinished moment, and just as importantly let the moment linger in you. To badly paraphrase Whitman, every leaf is a love letter from God. You can pick one up for a moment, but then you must leave it so someone else to find
It is the same with all of life, if we truly pay attention and increase our sensitivity to it. All life can teach us to be all that we can be. We can even learn from the leaves as they fall freely and dance in the wind.
Here’s an extract from Whitman’s Book “Leaves of Grass” from the chapter “Song of Myself” 48th Stanza, that I just badly paraphrased, pay attention the last few lines.
I have said that the soul is not more than the body,
And I have said that the body is not more than the soul,
And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one’s self is,
And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud,
And I or you pocketless of a dime may purchase the pick of the earth,
And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confounds the learning of all times,
And there is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a hero,
And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel’d universe,
And I say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.
And I say to mankind, Be not curious about God,
For I who am curious about each am not curious about God,
(No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God and about death.)
I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least,
Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.
Why should I wish to see God better than this day?
I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,
In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass,
I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign’d by God’s name,
And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe’er I go,
Others will punctually come for ever and ever.
Pay attention to all that is alive around you, we do not need to cling to anything, be open, live spiritually alive. Why do so many of us cling to things and will not let go? Why do we want to live with the illusion of control? Or on the other hand why do we want to rush through things and not experience the moment we are in? Why are we always wishing for the end of things? What are we afraid of? Why do we not want to fully experience life?
I had several conversations with people last week. Some I have known all my life and others I’ve known for only a short time. In each conversation there was a constant theme. The theme was fear. Fear I believe is at the core the two autumn themes I’ve been speaking of…to either wish days away or to cling to something that is over. These are the fears symbolic of autumn. It is fear that is at the root of the need to cling on and or control and it is fear that causes this desire to wish certain feelings away.
I’m no different myself by the way. I can want to wish certain experiences away, especially if they are uncomfortable, even painful. I noticed myself doing it the other day when I working out in the gym. I don’t always want to go through the pain of it, I just want the results that would come from doing so, but still I stuck at it. I have learnt to develop faith. I’ve also clung onto comfortable things and painful and destructive things at times in my life, for the fear of what might be if I just let go and let the wind of life take hold. It was fear that stopped me.
But what causes the fear, what causes this lack of trust. Well I think that it is lack of faith. Faith in life itself. It comes from a belief that life is hostile, against us and something that cannot be trusted. This is why we cling to things and will not let go. The antidote is faith. Faith in life itself, but this of course is a risk. It is a risk worth taking though and certainly beats the boredom of clinging to those rocks we heard about in the earlier story. We need to learn to let go and trust in the current and trust in the wind and to trust in the ever changing nature of life.
We need to learn to dance too, to play those autumnal games, conkers, catching leaves, hey maybe try kite flying. There is a joy in the ungovernable wind.
This brings to mind a lovely excerpt from Anthony Demello’s “The song of the Bird” it goes by the title “Don’t Change”
"I was neurotic for years. I was anxious and depressed and selfish. Everyone kept telling me to change. I resented them and I agreed with them, and I wanted to change, but simply couldn't, no matter how hard I tried. Then one day someone said to me, Don't change. I love you just as you are. Those words were music to my ears: Don't change, Don't change. Don't change . . . I love you as you are. I relaxed. I came alive. And suddenly I changed!
Now I know that I couldn’t really change until I found someone who would love me whether I changed or not.
Is this how you love me, God?"
Here lays both the problem and the solution. This is why I believe we cling to things or simply wish them away. This is why so many of us are afraid to fully experience the life we are experiencing right here right now. We don’t trust in life. We believe that life is untrustworthy. We fail to experience that love that is so present in life. We feel unacceptable as we are. Certainly this was my problem for so long. Thank God it is no longer the case. I do, I do, I do…every day…
You can see it in the leaves, in the trees in the folk and dogs in the park, in everything. All you have to do is pay attention, give yourself wholeheartedly to it.
This is how we learn to love life, to be a part of life? It begins by paying attention. By increasing our sensitivity to life. It begins perhaps by being like those falling leaves. By falling like those autumnal leaves, by not wishing away our experiences and by not clinging on…It begins by simply letting go and by learning to dance in the wind…
Let’s all learn to dance in the wind…Lets all become like falling leaves…Let’s all learn to dance the impermanence dance…Don’t pick them up though, leave them where you find them, for someone else to see.
So, let’s live more spiritually alive. Let’s increase our sensitivity to life. May our lives become our prayer.
Please find below a video devotion based on the material in this "blogspot"
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