
Dear Spirit to Spirit friend,
What Holds Us Up
"As all mountains stand on the ground
As all trees root in the soil,
As all rivers flow to the sea,
There's a substance under all life
that joins us and holds us up."
"When learning how to swim, we feel that we're sinking, and yet we don't. In just this way, there's something that holds us up, a mystical buoyancy under all our problems. Of course,
a stone will sink and a heart turned to stone will keep dropping. But not all things sink.
So our job is to stay light enough to remain afloat and to trust amid the turbulence that there's some element of being that will sustain us, if we surrender to it. This buoyancy of existence doesn't eliminate the turbulence of the surface where we have to live. But as the
air that makes up the sky also fills our lungs, what holds us up is around us and within us.
It lifts us when we least expect it, with a wave of being that will carry us, when we're still
light enough to receive it.
Yet living on the surface, we never know what will round our edges or touch us in a way that will stop our chatter. It might be when our eyes meet at the farmer's market in the bright sun. Or after a movie in the parking lot when we realize that we've been looking at the same star.
Like roots growing a mile apart in the stream, we're touched by the same current of life, though we may never know each other. Despite our complaints, the friction of the world slows us down till we receive everything. Though we often feel alone, we're never alone. And when we feel a sense of being held, we're coming alive. This is where we're really going, into the embrace of where we are."
Mark Nepo, "Things that Join the Sea and the Sky: Field Notes on Living"
In Gratitude & Love, Joanna
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