This morning over tea, Pam talked about improvisation.  About moving from one place to another unexpectedly, taking a fresh perspective, sitting where you don’t usually sit, walking in a different pathway around the house, outside of the house, driving a different route.

Improvisation is, of course, my favorite subject.  As I started to write this, I improvised by taking my camera outside and capturing the flowers that are blooming in my summer garden.  Yesterday, when I rode the lovely Sanne (the Friesian whose name means Lily, even though he is a boy), I improvised with halts and breathing, and conscious softening.  It felt like a meditation conversation between our two bodies and breaths.

Today, this poem was in my inbox.  It seems a perfect invitation for the day, for a life.

All the Hemispheres
by Hafiz

Leave the familiar for a while.
Let your senses and bodies stretch out

Like a welcomed season
Onto the meadows and shores and hills.

Open up to the Roof.
Make a new water-mark on your excitement
And love.

Like a blooming night flower,
Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness
And giving
Upon our intimate assembly.

Change rooms in your mind for a day.

All the hemispheres in existence
Lie beside an equator
In your heart.

Greet Yourself
In your thousand other forms
As you mount the hidden tide and travel
Back home.

All the hemispheres in heaven
Are sitting around a fire
Chatting

While stitching themselves together
Into the Great Circle inside of
You.

I saw these rocks walking on Philbin beach on Martha’s Vineyard last week.  I have been thinking about balance – about the dynamic, fluid, elusive quality of balance – emotional, physical, relational – about finding it, losing it, finding it again.  I am interested in the way that each action or event in our lives creates a series of reactions and corrections – a relentless, inevitable experience of fall and recovery.

When I was just starting to study movement and somatics, it was a revelation to discover that the simple act of walking was about falling out of and regaining balance.  I am curious about how much work I invest in not falling.  And what is falling?  Failure? Loss? Disappointment?  Fear?

Our oldest daughter’s announcement of an unexpected, unwanted (by us) pregnancy and subsequent TOTAL recalibration of her life path and our careful plans for her was a big fall. (An old AA joke:  Want to know how to make God laugh?  Tell him your plans.)

I wrote this in my journal a few weeks ago:  We are here.  She is poised at the precipice.  She stumbles, her body jerks and then her feet leave the ground and she is in freefall.  We stand below, watching her plummet.  I pray.  Is there a moment when falling becomes flight?

Yesterday we bought her the first little onesie and a couple pieces of clothing to accommodate her growing belly.  We are planning a wedding.  She is happy.  Over the weeks, we as a family are stumbling and teetering toward a new and unexpected balance, one which feels to me like flight, like swimming, like faith.