Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as a birds’ wings. --Rumi
The first strike of heat from the stove may have been painful, but none more painful than keeping our hands clasped and allowing burn wounds to fester and ache.
It is when we remain in either of these spaces--open or closed, contracting or expanding--that we stop growing. It is there we find paralysis.
Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding.
We can’t expand without the promise of contracting. And we can’t contract on those around us without the promise that we will once again expand.
The two as beautifully balanced as a birds’ wing.
There’s your lesson.
In the balance.
The seesaw of opening and closing.
When we find the space between day and night, dusk or dawn, that’s harmony.
There may yet be darkness here, but there is the promise of light.
And, for the record, dear ones, have you seen a bird try and leave the nest for the first time?
It isn’t always grace day.
That’s okay.
Eventually they learn of the wings beneath them and how to keep themselves somewhere between the great beyond and the ground.
And they stay there, opening and contracting their wings in the space in the middle.
And that’s where we all are.
Rather, that is where I am; I won’t speak for you.
Somewhere between a small child reaching for a stove, a small bird trying to leave the nest, and an Osprey, gliding on the breeze as though weightless.
You see, it isn’t the impulse to close that is wrong.
It isn’t the desire to open that is wrong.
It is the staying fixed in one position that is our paralysis.
Always closed, never allowing discomfort, never allowing growth.
Always open, never safeguarding, never assessing your needs.
Neither of these is a right place to be.
Inversely, neither of them is a wrong place to be.
They are right when we choose to leave them.
They are wrong when we try to keep them.