Let It Ripen. Let It Fall. Let It Be.
On cultivating balance through pleasure and pain throughout autumn, throughout life.
...They wanted to blossom,
and blossoming is being beautiful. But we want to ripen,
and this means being dark and taking pains.
- Rainer Maria Rilke, In the Drawing Room
We blossom to be seen; and we ripen to be consumed. We’re all desperate to be seen, but we are terrified to be consumed.
LET IT RIPEN
I often get caught up in the parade of accomplishments to accumulate praise and admiration, hungry for the high of validation not so different from the way I crave sweets when I’m avoiding the work of dreams that I often feel unqualified to pursue, when I am feeling most exposed and vulnerable. But just like the sweets, the convenient praise and admiration for work that does not light me up, never quite seems to satisfy me, and more and more often these sentiments of approval just make me feel nauseated. And so the praise and admiration have begun to wake me up like the presence of a toxin within the body that causes subtle then not-so-subtle discomfort--not because the people who offer such praise are disingenuous, but because I conveniently only allow them to see a surface rather than inviting them to taste the ripeness of my heart and soul beneath this skin. For most of my life, I have offered only my blossoms, which to some are beautiful for which I am flattered and grateful. Perhaps I am not the late bloomer I believed myself to be, but have all this time been leisurely ripening. Taking my sweet time. The nauseated sensations from the admiration of my blossoms are a signal from the intelligence of my flesh. This intelligence is telling me that I am approaching a ripe season, and it is no longer time to be seen merely for my blossoms, but to be consumed for my ripeness--to expose myself to transformation in intimate relationships of every variety.
Indeed becoming ripe requires “being dark and taking pains.” This is an acquired taste. Many will scrunch their nose and stick out their tongue in unpalatable revulsion. Others will bring their curiosity and a willingness to learn when and how and with what they can approach such a darkness with its generous helpings of pain. And enough people will immediately appreciate the depth and nuance of such a ripening, and they will want to savor each and every tone that flavors my harvest. They will taste it all: the bitterness of disappointment, the elations of surprise, the tenderness of gratitude, and the sweetness of patience. My textures are a secret recipe of happenings that I did not resist, but learned how and when to add them into the mixture. I do not have to explain the ingredients in order for the expression of flavors to nourish those who are seasoned enough to taste.
There are all the basic ingredients of experience that have gone into my mixing bowl as well as some unfamiliar to many. These are ingredients that were available to me in my region, in my time, in my circumstances. I must work with what I have had on hand, with what has been given to me, and to trust that I will find a way to integrate them all in a way that brings out a flavor of my own making. And now there are things that are no longer in my emotional and spiritual pantry, spices and seasonings that once brought me comfort that now, perhaps, I simply no longer have a taste for. So I got rid of them. There are also those resources in this inner pantry that I forgot about, but they are still some of my very favorites. They have been hidden behind the typical, more palatable, seasonings that I used more often in recent years because they were preferred by others. This had to change. I’ve been rearranging my inner pantry of ripening, revisiting personal preferences that originate in the intelligence of my own flesh. These natural preferences are not only the easiest to reach for, but the easiest to digest, to process, and to integrate into a wholeness that is primed for the final stage of ripening within the marination of warmth.
Rather than serving up our emotions raw for others to consume, this final stage is an alchemical cauldron of transformation. This transformation is, as Michael Pollan writes in his book Cooked, “quintessential and wondrous, subtle and delicate. The mouth cannot express it in words.” I usually resist this part of the process as the pace of modern life asks me to turn up the heat to microwave speed. But these days, I’m finding ways to resist this nuclear pace that causes an eruption of discomfort within my soul, and I am reclaiming a low-heat approach that keeps me simmering in the luxury of marination. I will be ready when everything feels right, sounds right, and tastes right--not a moment sooner, nor any later. I find that somehow I have absorbed a fear that I’ll arrive late and burn, but now I realize that much of the western world has lost its patience for ripeness and convinced itself that it is satisfied with unseasonal fare lacking not only in nutrients but in variety and flavor. I will emerge when I emerge, heavy with a ripeness and a potent scent, on the threshold of consumption.
LET IT FALL
I am heavy with a longing to be consumed, and there is just enough fear of where I might land to create a thrill within me. I must trust that I will fall when and where my resources are most needed, where they will be most appreciated. This is where I lose all control. This is the moment I arrive at the edge of possibility. I look out over the ledge and sometimes find myself hoping to land in the more fertile soils where others gravitate in crowds of homogenous ease. I look again, but this time I close my eyes, and trust that the winds will carry my ripe scent to a creature or bit of land in need of the nourishment beneath my skin, and my offering will be met with an elegance and equity of grace that will transform my ripeness into resonance. On the edge of possibility, I close my eyes, and let myself fall to the wind, to the earth.
I fall into the beautiful mess of grace where decomposition allows me to fall apart, to be broken down by forces outside myself. And to be valued, appreciated, and supported for each and every bit of me--not one piece of me will go unnoticed, unused. As I let go of control, I will see how in allowing myself to be appreciated, my gifts will expand as they take on new life within welcoming environments and relationships. I will see myself reflected in the light of another, and I will taste the savory tones of an unexpected yet delightful pairing. There is magic in this moment, which is the same moment grief begins to form. I have surrendered my former identity to be consumed. I was so very familiar with the ways in which I had come to define myself. And now, those definitions have dissolved into something that is quite unfamiliar. I must learn a new dance, a new recipe. But each time I go through this cycle I become more familiar with the rhythm of loss, and I can more quickly accept its timing and await my moment to enter the cycle of blossoming and ripening again.
But before I begin the cycle again, I must grieve.
LET IT BE
After the thrill and magic of being consumed, of falling into depths of nature, I will not emerge as the person I once was. There are mixed feelings in this moment, and I often overcomplicate the one thing that will continue the cycle most effortlessly: grief. It requires a stillness, a bare honesty like the quiet of winter. There is not much we can do in winter other than keep the fire warm within the darkest hours of the year. This is the fallow season, a phrase in the song where I hold my breath and my pulse slows to faint rhythms. Here I must trust in the earth to hold me as there’s not much I can do to force the coming of spring. Here I must let it be.
Perhaps this is why winter is one of my favorite seasons. I can rest and surround myself with family and friends while I surrender to nostalgia while dreaming of adventures yet to come. All my usual fussing about becomes obviously futile. This is the season that gives me permission to be idle and wear my heart on my sleeve, always happy to see and hear and feel my dearest humans while trusting I can cry out the grief in a cleanse of the heart. In the embrace of grief, all my senses come alive. I feel everything. Everything elicits an honest emotion, without any armor or protection from my most vulnerable bits. Let it be. Let everything happen to me:
Sent forth by your senses,
go to the very edge of your desire;
invest me.
Back behind the things grow as fire,
so that their shadows, lengthened,
will always and completely cover me.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Only press on: no feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself be cut off from me.
Nearby is that country
known as Life.
You will recognize it
by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.
-Rainer Marie Rilke
Seriousness. This is how I will recognize that nearby country of Life. To reckon with the seriousness is to reckon with gravity--with the grave. From ash I was formed, and to ash I will return. To recognize Life, I must reckon with the inevitability and nearness of my Death. I believe I must reckon with death daily--it keeps me real, authentic, and full of grace. Death bestows the gracefulness I desire to embody. Here, in the landscape of my mortality, I become just. When I am willing to descend into the essence of my humanity, my fragility, I most real, and I am most sweet--ready to be consumed in relation with friends, family, community, and the earth--ready to leave the Wasteland of individual separateness and enter into the chaotic but fruitful roots of relation. The heaviness I feel is a sign that I am sweetening, softening, ever closer to falling into the ecology of the living where my individual understandings and desires are transformed into substance I never could have imagined.
And so I fall. The heaviness is recognizable, and somehow attractive. The look, the scent, and the feel of my heaviness attracts the birds, animals, the earth’s soil, or, perhaps, a human. I am ripe and ready not because I strategized and hustled, but because I let everything happen to me. When the rains came, I stayed; when the sun came, I stayed; and when the gentle breeze caressed me, I luxuriated in its soothing rhythms.
In our modern culture of immediacy, I often no longer have the patience for ripening--for myself or for anyone or anything around me. When I default to control, to force,I wonder why I feel undernourished, unsatisfied, unused. I can consume before things are ripe, and I also offer myself before I am heavy with sweetness because I see the blossoms and they can be irresistible. Blossoms are pretty, but they do not have the nutrients of a ripened fruit that has patiently grown and is ready for consumption, digestion, and integration. I remind myself that I am most desirable at the moment I am about to fall from my branches on high and descend into unknown soil.
This is where the edge of my longing feels almost unbearable until something or someone receives me as I fall. And so, sometimes I am unwilling to go to the edge of my longing, and I settle for blossom consumption, and am left unsatiated and undernourished.
Francis Weller describes the loss we experience when we settle for the shallow and stunted world of eternal blossoming: “We have forgotten the commons of the soul--the primary satisfaction that sustained and nourished the community and the individual for tens of thousands of years. We have substituted a strange, frenzied obsession with “earning a living”--one of the most obscene phrases in our world--for the vital and fragrant life of the soul. We have sadly turned the ritual of life into the routine of existence.”
I can succumb to the pressure to remain in the world of blossoms, to stay youthful and innocent, carefree and light. I have resisted the very things that would bring vitality and the “fragrant life of the soul” to my life. I have created unseasonal routines in response to my fears of the rain, the wind, and the sun--things that could very well break me, and maybe they should so that I might become soft, digestible, and sweet. I have resisted this truth: that everything that happens to me is a gift that will shape me if I simply surrender and let it be. Let it be. And feel into my own deep response rather than running away to acquire more of the armor of blossoms.
And so I commit yet again to the ripening. To lay aside the armor of blossoms, of beauty, in order to be consumed. I commit to falling, to grace. And I commit to the grief that will sweeten this life of mine.
………