21 March 2014

Mixtapes From Babylon: Conspiracy Theory, Pt. 3

I was on my yoga mat one day, twisting and turning myself and trying not to worry too much about going to hell for chanting mantras along with the video.  I’d done this series of exercises enough times to be able to do most of the whole practice with my eyes closed. About half-way through the warm up, I could feel myself just grinning from ear to ear, smiling so hard and so big that I could feel all my teeth showing and my head tilted back. As I was holding a deep breath, with my arms and clasped hands over my head, just at the point where I was sure I was going to have to take a breath or pass out, this incredible wave of peace and bliss and awakeness and deep, fathomless love leveled me. In the maybe-30 seconds of that held breath, something so precious was made clear to me--in that next breath I took (as willful and purposeful as every single one I’ve taken before or since, or ever will until I breathe my last), I felt inside myself and around myself and in all the places there are to go in the whole wide universe a deep and profound connectedness to God as the source and very substance of my breath.  God was so very very big, and so very very good, and still found the time to love me so much as to show up under my very nose.  To have such a kindness extended to me, this breath...this life...all the goodness around me...to have that personal and intimate exchange with God just by breathing is awe-inspiring, and so incredibly humbling. That the Creator of All Things bothers with something as silly as my next little breath...or yours...or any of ours...that’s a wonder and a mercy.

This breath took place on a little rectangle of carpet, in my old bedroom, on my blue yoga mat.  I’m sure the cat was looking on disdainfully from the edge of the bathtub, in that odd and judgey way that cats have of staring at their humans. It was a perfectly ordinary breath, but it changed everything. That breath was so sweet, not rushed or hiccupy or choking.  I remember taking this long, luxurious sip through my nose, of feeling warm/not hot, kind of buzzy, and that strange feeling I always think of as the Scorcese Stretch--you know the one, where the dolly zoom gets all up in your head and you realize what you’re really supposed to be seeing. And even as I felt myself taking the breath, I felt utterly detatched from it--my lungs were glad to have it, and immediately began putting it to good use.  But my head and my heart and my soul, I guess, whatever Trinity of self I possess, basked in the glow of a Presence, of that first and always animating breath, of whispers of the true and best things about life and love, of sighs that transcend words, and the angelic harmonies of all the voices that ever were praising a God who just loves, loves, loves; who hopes and strives mightily with us to help us find ways to love God back, to see and feel the breath of God under the nose of every single person we meet, to love the next breath in our brother’s nose as much as we love the next in our own.

This feeling I felt was like nothing I’ve felt before or since.  I’ve reconciled myself to knowing that something like that may be a once in a life-time deal.  I read the story about how Moses had to veil his face after seeing just God’s back, because being in the presence of the Almighty rubs off on a person, and seeing Moses all aglow in the suntan of I AM apparently really freaked out the Children of Israel. I also read the story about how Elijah climbed the mountain to give God the finger--the really bad finger, the one you take out and point and shake and use to gesture with when you want to say, “Listen, dude...I’m doing what you asked me to do, what you made me to do.  I’m doing it.  We’ve got a situation you wouldn’t believe, and all I’m asking for you to do is WORK WITH ME HERE, LORD.  What, with all due respect, is the damn deal?” And God (using one of the three approved voices I really wouldn’t mind God sounding like) tells him to go stand outside the mouth of the cave in which he’d been hiding.  You probably know the rest, but I’ll fill you in--God ditches the obvious entrances of wind storm, pillar of fire, and earthquake, and instead Elijah finds himself clinging to a cleft in the rock and veiling his face with his cloak as a whisper of wind blew by him.  Just a whisper, a breath, a tangible and transcendental and utterly common occurrence, just God being God. I felt like that...awe struck by the regularity, the normalness, the banality of my breath, even as I revelled in this glow of compassion and loving kindness, this dazzling golden light that seemed to be all I could see behind my closed eyelids. God was there, loving me, right under my nose, and I stretched out as long and tall as I could and rested in that warm and lovely place.

Breathing has become a sacred thing for me.  It’s the simplest of the sacraments I celebrate in my life.  It’s my outward and physical sign of an inward and spiritual grace. Every single one is precious. I want to be careful with them, spend the well.  A phrase I heard on NPR the other day strikes me as particularly insightful, “I knew the moments were finite, yet unknowable.”  So it is with my breath, and with yours, and everyone else’s, and that’s one of the reasons why we should be mindful with whom we share our breaths, with whom and over what we may conspire. 

In the final analysis, one more breath can mean one more step, one more kind word, one more time to do what God has for you to do to the best of your ability, one more time to fully accept and love the world around you even when it's broken and dying and hard. One more breath will sink you or save you, but the reality of that breath is that it's not yours, it's borrowed and recycled and regenerated and so full of possibility and potential and fathomless love and mercy. It comes from the very mouth of God, and pours life and wonder into our little clay lumps of self, and it's job to conserve that breath, to use it well, to focus the intention of our life-force--our nephesh, our ruach, our prana, our whispers and sighs--into words of love and peace and kindness, even when the words are hard to find, and seem to get caught in the backs of our throats. 

To breathe together, to conspire, connotes a kind of intimacy.  Whispers, susserations, mutterings, sighs, noises that could barely properly be called vocalizations, almost mouthing the words--this is what we do when we hatch a plan, when we share breath, when we conspire, when we say i love you in the dark of night, when we argue in the bathroom surrounded by a houseful of people, when we take a cab to the airport, or conference in the hall before a meeting.  We share breath and intention and life in those breaths, with those people.  We should be careful that they are good people, that we and they are using those collected breaths to move onward and upward, people who can remind us, even on our worst days, that the wonders of a mighty God, lie just under our nose. In a place like Babylon--this broken and dying world around us, this place where we don’t fit right, where we are so painfully reminded of our own brokenness and that of others just by rubbing up against each other--we have to remember that, we have to be reminded of it--the real trick at the heart of it all is for all of us, just to keep breathing. 


mil besos,
rmgj

---
P.S. 


I remember taking a deep breath, one afternoon, not too very long ago. I took this breath and looked right into his big blue eyes, and told him I loved him for the very first time, ever. I'd been thinking it for the entire back half of the last week, before I saw him, again. Every time I thought it, this thought that I loved him, I felt like I had to take a deep breath and find my legs, again.  

So, I found myself looking at him, in his blue flannel shirt, sitting on my green couch, windblown from riding 90 miles in his van with the windows down, and still wearing his super-long beard, and I took this breath, and tried so hard not to be afraid or timid or talk myself out of it. In an outrush of breath that I was supremely happy did not come out as vomit, I told him that I loved him.  

And then he took a breath, and said he loved me, too. There have been many breaths between us--plans hatched, comments shared, dreams said out loud, discussions about all the house keeping minutae no one can make romantic, concerns and struggles. To be able to share breath with him is a precious thing to me, something that goes deeper than words, and into my bones. To know that we share breath together, and share it with a Creator who loved us into being and loved us into each other...well, that makes me have to take a big breath, and breathe out a very ardent and grateful sigh, a deep prayer of joy and thankfulness.  xoxo-r

 

19 March 2014

Mixtapes From Babylon: Conspiracy Theory Part 2



at various points in my life, yoga has been a really important practice.  sometimes, i even dream about yoga poses or classes or things to do with yoga, besides the really comfy pants. sometimes, when i can’t pray or don’t know what to pray for, and i feel restless and ill-at-ease, i can do a practice, and feel better. some people walk labyrinths, some people have therapists, some people do yoga, go to confession, take long walks, read their Bible, journal, whatever.  when i feel my brokenness poking through, i know the place i most belong for God to say what needs to be heard is on my yoga mat.

which brings us up to the present day.  i’m thirty-five.  i’m married to the absolute love of my life. we’re about to celebrate two years of knowing each other.  he is amazing.  he loves me so much and so well that some days, i even believe i’m the badass he says i am. and there are other days when i am hopelessly unconvinced of my awesomeness, and just pray he doesn’t figure out all the terrible shitty things i know to be true about myself and know that he will stay married to me, anyway, because he’s amazing and loves me, just the same, and poor him.  gross.

i can’t overstate the fact that i am terribly grateful for this man, and for the life we make together.  i could not have picked out a more appropriate and perfectly suited mate for my soul. every single day, i become more and more convinced he was absolutely custom made.  he is one of the best and brightest ways i see the face of Jesus in the world, and know the love of God in my life.

all of that is true, and so is the fact that right now, i’m just having a hard time feeling settled inside my own head. there’s kind of a lot going on.  life keeps happening, and whether or not i really could go for a two-week break on anything new happening at all, anywhere in the world, and just get kind of caught up doesn’t mean jack squat, in the grand scheme of things.  this is not how life works. sometimes, i have to get right with the fact that occasionally life gets a little busy and pokey and super-tiring and hard, and the thing i need to do most is just keep breathing. but holy smokes, my brain is so full, and it's a really good thing my brain remembers to breathe for me, because if i had to remember to do it every few seconds or so, at some point in the day, i would probably die.

we may be moving into a new house.  i have 2.5 jobs, and six email addresses to manage.  my work life is going to quintuple over the summer, and my job is still kind of strange and new to me, and while i know it’ll be fine, i’m kind of freaking the deuce out, because TRANSITION TO NEW THING I’VE NEVER DONE BEFORE.  and until that time, i’m trying to bill as many hours as i responsibly can at two very different but equally lovely non-profits, and subbing for the public school system.  it's kind of hard not to worry about those things...and other things...to just breathe through them, the way i have to remember to breathe through at charley horse at three a.m.

mostly, i worry about money and not making enough, and it always being winter and never Christmas and cancer and car wrecks and vulnerability and resilience and not being a whiner and is this shit normal at all and why does every third person seem to want to vote on whether we have kids or not and the damn bells have stopped being charming because sometimes it’s nice to sleep uninterrupted until 9:30 and should i cut my hair or leave it or does it make me vain to even think about that and i really need to buy a new jar of eye cream and did we eat enough protein this week i have no idea what i want to watch on tv and this rug is puckering in a funny way and i’m excited about buying a new dress but i don’t want to try one on and god i hope i don’t look like a dumb shit in the pictures (tangent--it’s not my wedding, why should i be giving a shit about if i look good in someone else’s pictures...so tacky to be so selfish) and why did it bother me so much that those kids were mean to me and called me a bitch and why was i afraid of them why did i feel like i had to shout to be heard or that i had anything worth saying to them that would make a difference in their lives did someone tell that child they were loved before they left the house did they have a house to leave why do i feel so white and so naive and does this mean i’m secretly this dumb about everything else in the whole world and no one had the heart to just tell me to wake up and smell the fried okra god i hope i remembered to put salt in that...

i don’t mean to issue heavy silence, because this shit, this broken tape of things I’m not even trying to hear, is not about anyone but me. and i suspect, at our toughest and most tired moments, all of us have unwound just a little bit. and i am quiet, right now.  on the couch, at night, during the day.  i work a lot from home, when i’m not in meetings or in a classroom.  our house can feel very big and very quiet.  and sometimes, that is really great.  when i’m doing what i like to think of as “reassessing”, it’s sometimes easy to get swallowed up by a big space, and i end up feeling even smaller than when i started.  i think that’s why lately, i’ve been sticking to the kitchen table and the backyard. even while i’m feeling kind of pokey and broken, right now, it’s nice to be able to watch the light change across the table and watch spring creep into the backyard.  the light and the color remind me that this part won’t feel so pokey and broken, forever.

and yoga breathing...i didn’t forget...part three to follow...

mil besos,
rmgj