Book of hours, II,16

How surely gravity’s law, strong as an ocean current, takes hold of even the smallest thing and pulls it toward the heart of the world.

Each thing— each stone, blossom, child— is held in place. Only we, in our arrogance, push out beyond what we each belong to for some empty freedom.

If we surrendered to earth’s intelligence we could rise up rooted, like trees.

Instead we entangle ourselves in knots of our own making and struggle, lonely and confused.

So, like children, we begin again to learn from the things, because they are in God’s heart; they have never left [God].

This is what the things can teach us: to fall, patiently to trust our heaviness. Even a bird has to do that before he can fly.

—Rainer Maria Rilke