“Heavy, heavy, heavy, hanging over your head. What are you going to do with it?” Thus we annually chanted as children, holding the birthday child’s gift over his or her head (or, when it really was heavy, forcefully pressing the thing down on the his or her skull), until it was handed over to the eager recipient, who had a brief opportunity, before removing the wrapping paper, to shake the package and determine from the rattling noise or muffled rustle whether the response was “Play with it!” or “hmmph, wear it, I guess.” (Of course, we could also tell by feel, not rattledge, if the package was a book, which also evoked delight.)

For months now, it seems, heavy, heavy, heavy has pressed on my head, or weighed down my heart. And, like my rhythmically challenged posterior, I can’t shake it. Doesn’t matter; this something is no gift, anyway, and there is no splashy paper or sprightly bow to make the burden bright and shiny.

I once was lost and then was found, finding answers in the lines of Laozi and the stillness of Tolle, in the daily rhythms of a balanced schedule with a balanced life, in the contemplation of birds and bunnies, trees and skies. I spent each morning reading wisdom and mulling what it might mean, what I could learn from it. And I wrote those ideas, internalizing by expressing, going within by verbally venturing forth. And I was at peace. And we walked most every day, and work was manageable in terms of time and sufficiently remunerative, and we were together, every day, and it was good. 

But the Golden Age is gone, Fortune’s Wheel has turned, and circumstances have conspired to undo whatever peace had been gained.

No, circumstances have posed challenges, and my weak spirit and egoic mind have driven me off the road and into a ditch, a mud-filled rut that leaves me spinning my wheels and going nowhere, a chasm deep but not beautiful, not a postcard-perfect canyon lined by the painted rocks of ages gleaming below a clear azure sky but, neath glowering clouds, a pathetic pit with sides covered by jutting boulders and thorny bushes and treacherous slides that simply carry one further and further down. 

I’ve been slowly but surely (the only sure thing) slogging deep into the Slough of Despond, weighted down not by sin (I think) but by wrongful thinking (unless that’s wrongly thought), and that particular swamp now home is not lovely to behold, nor can it offer what Mark Twain deemed the chief advantage of Heaven—climate—or what he identified as the principal attraction of Hell—society.

On this fifty-eighth November 4, though, I receive, I think—I hope—a gift in the words of Father Thomas Keating: “The habitual exercise of hope is an enormous liberation from beating ourselves to death for past misdemeanors, real or imaginary, and from the endless sifting through our motives for past actions that we can never recapture.”

His words are a present not to be shaken to detect a rattle but to let rattle around in one’s empty head. The mind’s true liberation is not when the Moon is in the seventh house, nor when any planets align (nor in psychoactive substances); it lies not in our stars, but in ourselves, in the radical practice of habitually exercising hope, in the transformative, transcendental meditation not on past malfeasances, misfeasances, and nonfeasances, nor on our mercurial resolves to perform future benevolences or atonements, but in this: in keeping hope alive. (I hear you, Jesse.) 

The smaller leaves on the birch out back seem to quiver in the steady breeze, shaking as though they are afraid while the occasional stronger gust makes the larger leaves of Little Maple sway elegantly, resonating with the air, taking what it has to give, waltzing to unheard music. That calls to mind another image from the contemplative workshop we’ve been doing for the last month, which expressed submitting to God’s will metaphorically as performing with a partner in pairs figure skating, with one partner (that would be God) (duh) leading and the other (guess who) responding to each gesture, each movement, with a complementary gesture or movement of his or her own. Submitting one’s will, then, is not knuckling under to God’s pressure, but dancing with the Lord of the Dance. 

Well, maybe. I mean, I like the image, but I’m too willful to be there yet, if ever. (Then there’s the whole God thing.) 

But this does teach me something, today: I realize that the smaller birch leaves aren’t really afraid, they’re dancing, too, just to a different tune than the maple leaves. Each has a unique partner in the dance. 

Perhaps, then, I can cling to hope, as those leaves do, ignoring their past as vibrant green sugar factories, unaware of their imminent future, when Atropos snips the last thread of life, and they will slowly parachute in a caressing breeze to a gentle landing on the soft ground, but simply being today’s best leaf possible. 

Perhaps I can slough off Despond, liberating shoulders and brain from the heavy heaviness. Perhaps I can seize Pandora’s box as my own (beware, Greeks bearing gifts: someone might snatch them) and embrace hope. Though the day reminds that I, like the leaves, am in the midst of autumn (perhaps on the other side of the “mezzo del cammin di [mia] vita”), I will try to resonate with nature’s breath, try to train my clumsy spiritual feet, and be energized by that perpetually motivating spiritual bunny, Hope. 

I sure hope so.

Words © 2011 AtHome Pilgrim.

All Rights Reserved.