Life is like a deep hip opener (read: yoga analogy)

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Right now, my life feels like that exquisite moment--when you've been trying to breathe and relax into a pose that is awkward and even hurts. You know it is creating space, that it will be filled with vital life force, but it's hard--and you've been in it so long you start to wonder if the instructor is daydreaming, or left the room or maybe you weren't listening carefully enough and you missed it when s/he moved on with the sequence. But then you hear a cue. After just one deep inhalation and exhalation you will step out of the pose. It's been painful and good for you, but it's almost over. and then you choose to surrender and make the last moment the fullest expression of the posture yet. and breathe.

That's where I am.
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I wrote this last week. And then the moment was over. And this is what I was waiting for:

Interpreting Screams

My house is loud. My mind is quiet. Thinking has been replaced by the voice and energy of two-year-old activity and the responses of us adults around him. I fully expect the substitution of noise for thought to be temporary--confidant that I will adjust to new ambient noises of play. But in the mean time, here I am, interpreting loud noise instead of phenomena related to justice after rape.

New sounds for these ears: His sweet bare feet pattering in excited circles on the concrete floor of the living room, giggles, legoes being poured from their box, automated toys, an enthralled and repeated introduction of himself into the fan, "I'm Judah!" which I think means "I'm happy and excited about the discovery of the effect these whirling blades have on my voice!"and of course screams-some of surprise and joy-"this bathwater is cold!" or "that praying mantis is awesome!" others demanding, or sad or asserting his will "pay attention to me" "my tummy hurts" "I don't want to sleep"or "I want to play in the mud, not wear sunscreen and suck my thumb before I let you wash my hands!" he really says all that--at least that's my translation. Much of what is being said I think might be summed up as, "I am still overwhelmed by my new surroundings! adjusting to them is hard and will take me a little while!" Lest, my words be understood as a complaint--this is an appropriate time to remind the reader of 4 important things: 1) I am head-over-heels in love with this kid, 2) his volume is surely not uncommon or above average for his age 3) I happily chose with my eyes wide open to be part of a community with his two-year old self, and 4) I recognize in cries and yells a valid and noteworthy form of communication.

If I screamed right now it would mean a few things. "I'm so unproductive it's scary!" "I need to work!" "I can't concentrate on reading other people's ideas let alone come up with my own!" and much more deeply honest, "I don't want to massively fail at the one thing I am trying to do that actually matters: loving people."

In all truth, I don't really feel the need to scream. I rather feel like taking some deep breaths and enjoying the solitude inspired by a few moments towards the end of a yoga practice recording that Kellen brought with her. (It has been awesome having a practice partner!) After sweating through an hour or so of beautiful posture sequences in a final resting posture, Tracy Chapman assures us, "Ooh Child, things are gonna get easier." At that moment the lyrics present themselves as irrefutable truth. Then a rather bizarre thing happens--the yoga class next door (when the original recording was done) begins screaming--for some inexplicable reason. We have no idea why--but the recorded instructor jokes that they are expelling demons. Perhaps that's not a bad idea. Maybe we all need to scream once in awhile and be given permission to act like we're two.

If you screamed right now, what would it mean?

Blood & light: a lenten contemplation 'On Turning Ten'

The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I’m coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light -
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.

-Billy Collins

When I read the poet say now he is mostly at the window, watching the late afternoon light, my memory responded with a quick flash of a history of evenings. It evoked two concurrent associations: coming home, and the end. In my warm surroundings I recalled an angled sun, pulling my coat tighter and turning my iPod up—Gnarls Barkley while I walk briskly over the Waterloo bridge after a lecture, or a cold drink and “a pile of meat” on the grill with Ben and Pete in the garden after writing all day. I remembered my short Denver commute, sitting at a traffic light facing west with cyclists and joggers rushing through the cross walk on their way to Wash Park, undiminished appreciation for the awesome Rocky Mountains behind them with snow turned pink and purple in the middle of summer. I thought of the golden light of Ugandan sinking sun pregnant with life reflecting off of ancient trees and red roads—work is done. I’m on my way home, on the back of a boda boda bicycle, or in CPA’s old pickup dodging potholes but still moving too fast for my eyes to focus on any of the blurred leaves in the bush I'm passing. But then there are the evenings by the window, that insist you acknowledge something is over, that a time you loved has finished. It is, indeed a solemn moment, almost holy. I don’t know why, but for me they always seem to happen in the kitchen. Maybe it’s the warmth, or all of the conversation and collaboration that happens around preparing meals. Yesterday I felt it here. I shooed a chicken out the back door, closed the screen and looked around my kitchen in the evening light. I’m not going far. But I’m acutely aware that my life is about to change.

Maybe it’s actually part of going home. Acknowledging all the little ends. Letting go. Embracing what is ahead and celebrating the ways that it expands our limits of being. Recognizing the new. Accepting loss that comes with it. To inhale, we have to exhale.

I felt this today when I was practicing yoga. A beautiful pose with my heart open. I took a deep breath and sunk in. Suddenly I became conscious that I was a little bit deeper than I have ever been before. I was experiencing my body in that state for the first time. I felt this rush of joy even while I noticed my tight hips and shoulders, smiling to myself and realizing a newness of being—like a child discovering her hands. We have so much that we have yet to explore. We have so many limits that we can expand, boundaries in our bodies, minds and spirits that can and do shift. I think we lose the wonder when we begin to believe the lie that all is known, experienced and stale. What is true: Everything is being made new.

There is a kind of solemnity and appropriate sadness that comes as 10 becomes 20 and 30 and so on—but this poem reminded me of a duality in being that allows for the cohabitation of child-like joy and loss:


When you cut me I bleed.

And I shine.

Both these things are true.

World Sorrow

by Holly
I used to like very serious movies with painful subject matter. No need for happy endings--I liked movies that depicted the sorrow of the human experience. Not that I don't still appreciate the art of honesty in film--but I just don't feel like I have the space to take it in. These days I only watch things that make me laugh. At the end of the day I don't need any more reminders of how painful living on earth is.

Lately, I've been pouring all my energy into work--and while the last month has been one that has been unparalleled with impact and significance for me, I'm tired and kind of stressed out. My body tends to take it on, so in an effort to surrender (and inspired by another yoga journal that Ryan sent me via the Celebration crew), I'm spending more time on my mat getting centered, grounded, and opening my heart, making some space in this crowded soul of mine.

There's an article in the journal about sadness and grief. Personally, I feel ridiculously blessed to have had an unfairly preserved life--If there is a reason, then I sometimes think it is so I have the capacity to feel more "Welt schmerz" or world sorrow--a sadness that arises without a personal cause--a transcendant feeling of pain for the state of the world. (apparently, this is written about in a book by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe called the Sorrows of Young Worther, which I've never read but I'm now intrigued and if I can make enough space to handle something sad in my free time I will) I remember once calling my dad in tears, when I was having a crisis of faith and wondering if God was indeed good--and his first response was to ask whether it was me or a close friend who had experienced some great pain. It was neither, I was still in university and a war I opposed was starting and I was studying genocide and angry about unanswered prayer in Darfur and I just couldn't handle it anymore.

So, I've been thinking about the constructive potential of sadness--at the same time the risk of spiralling feelings of hopelessness and lack of vision that lead to a destination of either cynicism or resignation. The constructive potential is when we recognize that suffering is not personal but universal to the human experience. I say it has potential because the risk in recognizing the pervasiveness of suffering is that it can evoke paralysis, or feelings along the lines of the writer of Ecclesiastes, "everything is meaningless."

The other option is that it has the potential to inspire great compassion. I'd choose compassion over paralysis any day--but compassion is not a solitary discipline. I'm convinced that sorrow over the state of the world is channeled into creative and active compassion through community.

That means, as much as I enjoy doing yoga--I can't tranform strong negative emotions by myself--or just by realizing that I'm connected to everyone else, I think it's active, I have to be connected. God's spirit transforms through the experience of community.

It was a great blessing to have these beautiful people from Celebration in Lira. It was encouraging to be with them while they also wrestled with the tension between great compassion and debilitating hopelessness. It's a reminder that the struggle is worth it, and I'm grateful for their presence, from the first evening of receiving cards, books, and yummy things from home (Thank you everyone from CCC that sent us stuff!) to Solidarity Day in an IDP camp, to evening conversations, blueberry pancakes, lions in the rain, and swimming while overlooking the Nile.

“Living your dream is a full-time job”

Our beautiful rock star friends—the Kents—were describing their tour schedule and Seth said something that struck me. “Just because you’re living your dream doesn’t mean that it doesn’t feel like a full time-job.” The funny thing about living your dream is that you don’t morph into a superhero with superhuman powers. When I dreampt about the dream job I was my dream self while I worked it. Instead I have the same limitations and shortcomings that I had before.

The past few weeks I’ve been learning about empowering rather than taking power. I say learning because it sounds more positive than saying I’ve been making lots of mistakes--which is closer to the truth. I’ve acted way too American in several instances when I should have been more sensitive, should have been slower to speak and quicker to listen. My colleagues have been patient while I try to get my foot out of my mouth—a place--I’m afraid I put it too often. I’m learning to stay in my role as an advisor and support efforts of a multi-cultural team. At the moment I’m enjoying the freedom of holding work with open hands. I find that when I let go of the need to control everything my inability to do so isn’t nearly as frustrating. I did yoga during lunch, so we’ll see how long this moment lasts.