we discover that falling in the canyon is our initiation
—Mark Nepo, “The Life After Tears”
I didn’t land. I fell and I fell and I fell.
At first as I plummeted, I feared the landing,
imagining an imminent crash. Then,
I fell through nights and middays. Fell through
kitchen floors and highways. Fell through
birthdays and Saturdays. Fell until the sense
of groundlessness was so familiar it no longer
felt like peril. I don’t know when I stopped falling.
There was no splat. No splash. No crushing of bones.
No sense of arrival. In fact, I am not certain
I am done with my falling. But I do know now
the falling is not something to be feared.
Not that we grow wings. This is not about flying.
It’s about falling. About meeting the gravity
and feeling its force and letting it carry me
in ways I have never before let myself be carried.
Now I know that the canyon of grief is
just another name for living the fullest life.
The reward for the falling is to no longer
expect a reward. The reward of falling is to
learn to not resist the falling. The reward of falling
is to feel how grace falls with us as if holding
our hand, like a teacher, like a friend.
Posts Tagged ‘surrender’
After I Fell in the Canyon of Grief
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, canyon, falling, grace, grief, surrender on January 7, 2026| 5 Comments »
Give Up Rosemerry, He Wrote in His Letter
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged identity, letting go, surrender on January 4, 2026| Leave a Comment »
with thanks to Zhim
In fact, he didn’t write my name.
In fact, he wrote his own.
Inserting my own name came naturally.
Give up Rosemerry.
How thrilling the sentence became.
“A balancing counterweight,” he wrote,
“for a being who has extreme passion.”
The words swirl in me like a storm.
On a day when the news is of conquering,
this simple direction toward surrender.
I become a student of snow.
Give up Rosemerry. Give up.
What beauty arrives as I let go?
Carving the Pumpkins
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged gratefulness, halloween, pumpkin, surrender on October 26, 2025| 4 Comments »
We plunge our bare hands into our pumpkins
and pull out seeds and strings and thick orange
goo; we scrape at the walls with grapefruit
spoons and all the while as we scoop at the earth-
scented mess, I never once think how I was dreading
this, this annual ritual I’m supposed to enjoy, but don’t.
But tonight it’s as if the part of me in charge of delight
has taken over and I remember I want nothing more
than to be exactly here on the floor with my girl
and my husband, sawing a giant smile into my pumpkin,
fueled by a gratefulness so honest it shines like a votive
through whatever inside me is hollow.
After Four Hours of Driving, We Arrive at What Google Maps Said Would Be a Park
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, driving, laughter, map, surrender on October 2, 2025| 3 Comments »
There is no park.
Still, we park at the edge
of the road and look out
over the Hudson
beyond the thick trees,
inhale the yellowing
scent of autumn,
reach our arms up to the sky,
play chase around the car,
and laugh the whole time,
at first in disbelief,
and at last in surrender.
One more chance to meet
the world that is here
instead of the world
we expect. One more chance
find ourselves grateful
to be exactly where we are.
New Cinepoem from Risking Love
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cinepoem, Risking Love, surrender on September 4, 2025| Leave a Comment »
What happens when we fall in love with the world without trying to change it? Can we? This poem was written from a first line offered by Mirabai Starr.
“The Medicine of Surrender” is the thirteenth track on RISKING LOVE, a spoken-word album that explores how we might fall more deeply in love with the world as it is, even when that seems impossible.
RISKING LOVE audio by Steve Law. Video by Holiday Mathis. Please, watch the video (above) and share it. We made this for you!
To purchase RISKING LOVE, visit here. Spotify: here. Deezer: here. Pandora: here. Apple Music: here. YouTube Music: here
Video and Audio Releases from RISKING LOVE to Date
Safety Net
The Precious Matter of Love
I Want an Interlude with Mr. Clean
Into the Questions
For the One Who Is Gone
In Case You Don’t Know Already
The Long Marriage
The Broken Heart Goes Dancing
Still Here
Self-Portrait as Tuning Fork
Because My Heart Is Where You Now Dwell
No Longer Empty-Handed
The Medicine of Surrender
When We’re All the Way Out of the Way
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged April Fools, ecstasy, showing up, surrender on March 31, 2025| 11 Comments »
We show up, burn brightly, live passionately and hold nothing back and when the moment is over, when our work is done, we step back and let go.
—Rolf Gates
This moment, too, is surrender, this blazing,
this bliss-ache, this bright-chime of being,
this showing up heartbare with no shred held back,
this feral unselving, this radiant loss
of all knowing, this wild unhiding
where anything can happen next,
this, too, is surrender. Not like the soulquaking
gut-fall of grief, only just like it, no foothold
except on the needle-tip point of what is,
that place where there is no story, no self,
no yes, no no, no safety, no promises, and
all is being, yes, this, too, is surrender,
this opening beyond self, this radiant obliteration,
unfathomed unfurling, trust-flaring, now-flaming,
instructionless grace, this ecstatic exploding
that always and never arrives.
*
Oh friends … Rumi said, “Be a fool,” and also suggested “be helpless, dumbfounded, unable to say yes or no … crazed, lying in a zero circle, mute …” …
And so … happy April Fool’s. Perhaps not the fool where you try to trick people, more the fool where you are “surrendered to beauty.”
Design
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged canyon, reverence, self, surrender on March 30, 2025| 11 Comments »
Imagine the self as a canyon in the making,
once solid, and then, ongoingly,
made more spacious, shaped by water,
by wind, by forces beyond its control.
Whatever is sacred, I feel it in canyons,
these earthen temples to surrender—
such holy architecture
with their deep and ancient silence,
with their steep and crumbling walls.
How sacred the angle of light
as it enters from the rim and slants
through the belly of air.
Sacred, too, the shadows,
like those most secret parts of ourselves
that never see light.
When I think of the self as a canyon,
it is easier to believe I, too,
can be made more spacious
through surrender, the shape of my life
an ever-changing record of where I resist
and where I release,
oh this practice I am still learning
to trust, this erosion of self
into reverence.
The Minimum
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breathing, spring, surrender, worry on March 25, 2025| 1 Comment »
Even when worry wrecks us,
leaving us broken on the shores
of the life we had,
even when we have been wrung
like rags, even when we
are brittle, snappish things,
even then the scent of spring
can reach us with its notes
of damp soil, sharp pine,
and sun-warmed grass,
the air clean and slightly sweet.
We don’t need to open
our eyes. Don’t need to try.
All that is asked of us: breathe.
Stage 4
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cancer, honesty, Kyra Kopestonksky, music, surrender on January 29, 2025| 6 Comments »
for K
Let this darkness be a bell tower and you the bell. As you ring, what batters you becomes your strength.
—Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. J. Macy and A. Barrows, “Sonnets to Orpheus II, 29”
Oh friend, as life batters you,
again, you make music—
not the music you’ve practiced,
not the gentle strains of hope
you longed to share,
but a naked ringing.
Oh, how you teach me.
There is so much goodness
in fear when it is shared truly—
not the innocence of a lullaby,
but the brutal shine of a gong.
How essential and urgent it is,
your song, my bell.
You change my ideas of what
it means to be strong—
not that we don’t get battered,
but that we let ourselves feel
and meet such moments
unrelentingly, beautifully real.