"When our world falls apart and we have no more faces to wear - that’s when it’s beautiful, and that’s when we change." ~ Jon Foreman
Have you ever seen scaffolding around a building or a statue or even a large piece of art? The scaffolding is purposeful, helpful, and even necessary for the project under construction. Without the scaffolding, the renovation or construction cannot be completed. It’s perfect for a season. But scaffolding is meant to be temporary. It’s not meant to stay.
The same goes for human scaffolding. The identities, roles, routines, certainties, and structures that we lean on for our security and growth are incredibly helpful for a season. But, at some point, those structures and identities must fall away so that a deeper truth of who we are at our core can be revealed.
We humans don’t tend to ask for or want our scaffolding to fall away. After all, these structures offer so much apparent security, safety, and even joy; things like our jobs, relationships, finances, and physical health.
But Life doesn’t wait for our human mind to be ready. Instead, the scaffolding tends to fall away when something new is waiting in the wings to emerge; when an expansion in consciousness and Truth is ready to reveal itself.
I think about times in my life when my own scaffolding was pulled away, leaving me feeling destabilized and afraid. One of the first times was in college when I lost someone I loved very much. I didn’t even realize at the time how much of my security and happiness were tied up in simply knowing he was there for me. And then, quite unexpectedly, he was gone from this earthly realm. No longer available for chats, pep talks, or problem-solving sessions.
For a while, I felt lost and disoriented. I couldn’t seem to find a steady ground to stand on. The world didn’t really make sense for a while. My mind and heart felt shattered.
Thankfully, Life—as it does—continued living me; walking me to classes, taking me to meals in the cafeteria, and keeping my eyes open for all-night study sessions. But, my internal world felt unstable and broken.
I began questioning things like, where does my safety and security actually come from? Where do happiness and joy reside? And how do I move forward when it is now apparent that nothing in this world of form is stable or guaranteed?
And then, one day as I was walking to class, I noticed some pink tulip buds poking their little heads through the soil, and I was overcome with a moment of peace and joy. Nothing had changed in my world, but seeing those little buds peeking through the hard mountain earth allowed for a moment of pure presence. Peace. Joy. Surrender.
And from there, I began to notice more brief moments of complete peace for no apparent reason other than the mountain breeze blew across my face or the tree outside my dorm room brushed up against my window.
I was only 19 years old, but I had my first deep realization that peace, security, and joy were within me even when I couldn’t feel it in direct experience.
That season of scaffolding falling away planted a seed within me. There was a quiet knowing that, in the midst of the shattered heart and mind—in the midst of the destabilization and fear, I had always been OK.
What was left in the wake of the scaffold’s fall was an invitation to trust what remained within me: a flame that could not be extinguished; a light that could not be dimmed.
I was reminded of one of Albert Camus’ most famous quotes:
In the midst of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love.
In the midst of tears, I found there was, within me, an invincible smile.
In the midst of chaos, I found there was, within me, an invincible calm.
In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.
And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.
In the three-and-a-half decades since that season, hundreds of other scaffolds have fallen away. Each fall has brought its own version of fear, grief, and shakiness. But, somehow, each falling away of an identity, relationship, or anything I believed to be solid and stable also brought an even deeper recognition of the peace, security, and joy that are inherently within me. Each season of destabilization somehow grew my absolute trust in what is within me that cannot be seen or adequately explained.
Today, I recognize that, like all of us, I still have many scaffolds that feel really helpful and supportive. But I no longer believe that those identities, relationships, or even health statuses are where my peace, joy, and security are found. Surely, I will continue to tremble and even wobble when another scaffold falls away. After all, that is part of the human game we all signed up to play.
But in the trembling, there is always a tenderness waiting to shine. There is a deeper expansion of awakening waiting to emerge.
And it is all so incredibly trustworthy.
What falls away was never mine to keep. But what remains can never be lost. That is the peace that passes all understanding.
The Blessing of the Open Sky
When the scaffolding falls, what remains is not absence — it is essence.
The quiet pulse beneath every doing. The stillness that has never left.
Life, in its mercy, takes away what can be taken
so that we might rest in what cannot be lost.
We were never meant to live balanced upon the beams.
We were meant to fly in the open sky they once obscured.
The building was never the point.
The open sky was.
And one final note for the tenacious little ego who cries with such conviction, “I must figure this out so that I can take action! Otherwise how will anything ever change?” I offer this:
Action is not the result of a mind’s activity but the unfolding of Life itself. What if, instead of asking “How will I take action,” we move from judgment to curiosity and say, “I can’t wait to find out which actions will be taken through me!” In the relaxing of the grip of the proverbial steering wheel, action is taken. Change happens. And the entire body-mind rests. Finally.
“This pain is ancient, and it is passing through awareness. I do not need to rescue it; I need only to honor it.”
This post is dedicated John Magnuson, my beloved campus minister who left this earlthy realm in 1990.