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Yoga lesson (surprise)

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On Friday I performed a headstand and a handstand in yoga class. I surprised myself. But that is part of yoga. You push yourself and stretch yourself. You find your edge. It isn’t about hurting yourself or falling over that edge. It is about stretching, both physically and mentally. It is about unkinking yourself too – getting rid of rigidity in thought and body.

I’m in a process of self improvement. I’m in a process of body modification, but piercings and surgery aren’t involved. I’m transforming myself from the inside out. I’m not interested in the quick fix or the short term. I plan on walking on this path for the rest of my life.

American society doesn’t teach this. It teaches mindless living. It teaches eat whatever you want and take a pill to fix the resulting health problems. It teaches live for the moment and don’t plan ahead. It teaches that somebody else will save you, fix the problem, make it better.

Eating well and exercising and being creative are some of the most counter-cultural things you can do.

It has taken me a year of yoga and three years of water aerobics to be able to perform those moves. Either I needed all that work to be physically strong enough to do them, or I needed all that time to feel confident enough to try. Or I needed a teacher to suggest them to me and show me how. Or all three.

I’ve made a habit of writing every day, and now I’ve added in drawing every day. Everything worth having starts in such simple ways. Who knows where this is leading to? What will I surprise myself with a year from now, three years from now?

Apples, or how to get quality through focus.

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I read once about how the Japanese grow such amazing apples. They look at the small apples when they are just beginning to grow and they pull off the ones that they don’t need. All the ones that look a little scraggly or misshapen they pull off. Because of this, the other fruit gets the energy that was going to them. So instead of having 10 good apples and 10 ok apples, they get 10 amazing apples. Quality over quantity.

I think it would be a good idea for us to apply that concept to all of our activities. In this, I’m specifically thinking about hobbies, or things we do for fun that we would like to get better at.

Rather than getting scattered trying to do too many things, select the ones that look the most promising. Pick those that look fruitful, if you will.

What do you enjoy doing most? What do you think you would like to spend more time on and get better at?

We have only so much time in our days and in our lives. It is wiser to pare down and do two things amazingly well than 10 things only ok.

I’ve read that the difference between an average artist and an amazing one is practice. The main difference is time – specifically 10,000 hours of time – spent honing your craft. This applies to music, to writing, drawing. It is the same for a seamstress or a surgeon. Want to get better at it? Do it. A lot. Make a regular habit of it.

Some natural aptitude is helpful, but the real difference is work.

Nobody starts off an expert. Of course your first attempts look wonky. Don’t compare yourself to anyone else – they aren’t you. What is important is that you hone your craft, your skill.

There is a Chinese saying that the best time to plant a tree was 100 years ago. The second best time is today.

Get going.

First you have to see the box.

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Sometimes there are ways to say things that don’t say anything at all. You can write a review of something and never really say if it is good or not. If you are really clever, you can spend your whole life doing this.

Or is it actually clever to not really say anything? Who are you fooling? Yourself, or your audience? Is it that you don’t know how you feel about your topic, or you are afraid of offending someone? It is all too common that someone will get offended by what you say, and if you say nothing offensive, they will continue to read what you have to say.

But both of you are wasting your time.

You could say that something is indescribable. Does that mean that you simply don’t have the words to describe it? Does it mean that you haven’t had the life experience necessary yet to describe it? Or does that mean that you aren’t brave enough to describe it? That to tell someone what you really think might make them angry at you? Might make them think differently of you?

You could say that something is incomparable, and you’d also be hedging your bets. Everything is comparable. You can compare everything to something else, if nothing else to say how much not like it the item is.

But both these words are used to make people think that something is really amazing, when it might be really nothing at all. It might be that it is so bland and boring that the author really couldn’t come up with words that were worthwhile.

The phrase “Think outside of the box” is getting cliché. It was cool for a while, but somebody needs to apply that thinking to the phrase itself and come up with something else.

We all need to think this way. We all need to take the box and tear it up and find a bucket. We need to see the box for what it is – we need to see how our language, our words, our culture, our society creates a box for us. We need to see the invisible walls that have been put on our understanding and our ways of doing things. We are taught from a very young age how to think and see and act, and those rules help us all live in community. But those rules and the overgeneralizations that occur from those rules always prevent us from seeing what really is there, and what can be there.

Artists challenge the status quo all the time. The only way you can create is to tap in to the great well of “what if?” and “why not?” You don’t have to paint to be an artist. I’m using “artist” in the biggest way possible. “Artist” means anyone who is creative – anyone who makes something different, brings some idea to life that wasn’t there before. You can be a musician or a writer or a dancer or in business or medicine. Your “art” doesn’t have to be physical. It can be a different way of thinking, of doing things.

Anais Nin said “We don’t see the world as it is. We see it as we are.”

Change yourself. Challenge yourself. Create.

And when I say “create” it isn’t as difficult as it sounds. Often when I create I have no idea what is going to happen. I start off with some vague idea, some seed, and I give it a little bit of time and attention and it grows into something I didn’t expect. But that is the trick – be open to the idea. Be available to it. And give it time – work on it. Welcome it. You and the world will both be better because of it.

Prison of cancer, and thankfulness.

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I know two people who have cancer right now. It doesn’t look like they are winning the battle. One is a friend from high school, so she is my age. One is my mother in law. Sandy, my friend, has brain cancer. The doctors have recently told her that they are not going to continue treatment. Chris, my mother in law, is still undergoing chemotherapy.

Both don’t want to die, of course.

Prayers are going up, out, across, and within for them. Prayers asking for relief, for healing. But healing comes in many ways. When we pray, it is useful to remember that God isn’t our waiter. God does what is necessary for The Plan. We aren’t big enough to see The Plan. We are part of it. We are inside it. We are pawns on this board.

I offer you a story from the New Testament.

Acts 12:1-17 (NRSV)
1 About that time King Herod laid violent hands upon some who belonged to the church. 2 He had James, the brother of John, killed with the sword. 3 After he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also. (This was during the festival of Unleavened Bread.) 4 When he had seized him, he put him in prison and handed him over to four squads of soldiers to guard him, intending to bring him out to the people after the Passover. 5 While Peter was kept in prison, the church prayed fervently to God for him. 6 The very night before Herod was going to bring him out, Peter, bound with two chains, was sleeping between two soldiers, while guards in front of the door were keeping watch over the prison. 7 Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell. He tapped Peter on the side and woke him, saying, “Get up quickly.” And the chains fell off his wrists. 8 The angel said to him, “Fasten your belt and put on your sandals.” He did so. Then he said to him, “Wrap your cloak around you and follow me.” 9 Peter went out and followed him; he did not realize that what was happening with the angel’s help was real; he thought he was seeing a vision. 10 After they had passed the first and the second guard, they came before the iron gate leading into the city. It opened for them of its own accord, and they went outside and walked along a lane, when suddenly the angel left him. 11 Then Peter came to himself and said, “Now I am sure that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from the hands of Herod and from all that the Jewish people were expecting.” 12 As soon as he realized this, he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John whose other name was Mark, where many had gathered and were praying. 13 When he knocked at the outer gate, a maid named Rhoda came to answer. 14 On recognizing Peter’s voice, she was so overjoyed that, instead of opening the gate, she ran in and announced that Peter was standing at the gate. 15 They said to her, “You are out of your mind!” But she insisted that it was so. They said, “It is his angel.” 16 Meanwhile Peter continued knocking; and when they opened the gate, they saw him and were amazed. 17 He motioned to them with his hand to be silent, and described for them how the Lord had brought him out of the prison. And he added, “Tell this to James and to the believers.” Then he left and went to another place.

Notice that “the church prayed fervently to God for him” in verse 5. God sent an angel to free him. He didn’t recognize it was an angel. He thought it was a vision, but he did what he was told. He walked past the prison guards. Iron gates opened on their own.

Who is to say that prison and cancer aren’t the same? Both hold you hostage. Both stop your progress. Both can be the end of you. So I’ve thought about this story and linked the two. Peter was freed from prison because of intercessory prayers. God heard the prayers and sent an angel.

Who is to say that angels don’t take the form of doctors and nurses? God works through us. Healing can come in surprising ways. We are constantly looking for miracles, while not noticing the ones that happen around us all the time.

I prayed for Sandy in earnest when I found that the doctors had decided to cancel treatment. They feel that there is no point. I’ve been praying for her off and on in the meanwhile, but this renewed my efforts. While I was praying I asked God to heal her. I got the decided feeling back from God – “why should I?”

This stumped me. This is God? This is the all-loving, all-merciful God? I said in reply that it was because He would be praised and thanked for it. He said “Why? She hasn’t thanked me yet.”

I thought, really? Is that true?

Then I thought, how petty.

Do I want to worship a God that has to be appeased? Do I want to worship a god that essentially says “What’s in it for me?” when you ask for a boon?

I grumbled about this.

And, then, as usual, I started writing. I understand things by writing. Writing isn’t about pinning things down all the time. For me, it uncovers. It digs down. I learn things when I write about them. So I wrote. And something amazing came to me.

God wants us to be thankful because that is what separates us from animals.

God made all of the earth, and all that is in it, but he made us separate. He commanded the Jews to say at least 100 blessings every day – to constantly be on the lookout for ways to say thanks. Christians are adopted Jews, yet we somehow forgot that command.

We are commanded to be thankful, not because God needs it, but because we need it. We need to be thankful, to be aware, to be alert. We need to not take anything for granted. We need to be awake to the beauty of life and be grateful constantly.

Otherwise we become like animals. We forget who we are. We forget where we came from. We forget where we are going. We spend our days being asleep even when we are awake.

God wants us to be fully alive. There is something to this life that is interesting. You can be alive, but not living. You can go through you days, all day and all life, and never really live.

Who cares about “life after death” if we never even lived while we were alive? If there is “life after death” would we waste it as well, being mindless?

Thankfulness keeps us alive.

Don’t wait to be thankful. Don’t wait until your prayer is answered. Be thankful now. Be thankful for what you have. If you are a good steward of a little, then you will be given more. Remember the story of the servants who were given different amounts of money to keep for their master? It isn’t about money at all.

Resurrection

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I’m not about “the resurrection of the dead”. That line in the Nicene Creed I fumble over. I say it half heartedly. Maybe I do mean it, but not in the way that it is meant. I’m not really interested in dead people coming back to life, but people who are already alive being really alive, being fully present, being intentional about their lives.

I think this is much more meaningful than the idea of the Resurrection that is currently sold to us.

The current idea of the Resurrection is concerned with a future that we can’t see. We can’t know when it is going to happen. And it doesn’t make for any real changes now. The current idea of the Resurrection is something so far out there that it sounds like science fiction.

Maybe it is possible. Maybe it will happen. But how does that make the world better now?

Sure, I believe in it, in the same way that I believe that Jesus was born of a virgin, and that he walked on water. I believe it because it doesn’t hurt to believe it, and because I was told it by people who mean well. I believe it because it is there, as part of my faith structure.

But I’m more mystical. I dig further. I dig deeper. I start to wonder how far this idea can go, because God is quantum. God has revealed things to me to be far bigger than I ever imagined. When God says something is going to happen and it does, it is always more surprising and amazing and complete than my little head can grasp.

I believe in a resurrection of the dead right now, right here. I believe in a God who wakes us up to our calling, who fills us, who animates us. I believe in a God who created the world and filled it with all sorts of living things, and who does the same for us. I believe in a God who loves us and calls us and wants us to be active participants in this world, who wants us to show love by being love.

I believe in a resurrection of the dead in the biggest sense. I believe that God is here, right now, and is on our side. I believe in letting others know that God is real and created each person because each person is needed and wanted. I believe in sharing the idea that nothing God made is an accident.

I believe in a God who is approachable by us, on our feet, faces upturned. There are too many stories of people who threw themselves to the ground when they were approached by God or God’s messengers – and they were repeatedly told not to do that. They were told to not be afraid.

I believe in a God who forgives us, who seeks us, who celebrates when we wake up to our full, true nature of being daughters and sons of God. I believe in a God who sees us all as equal, and wants us to do the same.

I believe in a resurrection of the spirit, right here, right now, no waiting.

Don’t be a zombie.

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Who are you?

Now, who are you really?

What have you always wanted to do? What is your dream vocation?
Are you doing it? Why not?

I want to encourage you to dream big. I want to encourage you to be the person you were made to be. I want you to wake up and see that life is indeed what you make of it.

My father wanted to be a conductor. Not of trains, although there was one summer he got to operate the trolley at the Chattanooga Choo Choo. What he really wanted to do was conduct an orchestra. His first and truest love was classical music. I remember him telling me a story that when he was young he used to listen to his classical records in the closet.

He was listening to classical music. In the closet. He was hiding as if he was doing something wrong.

He never lived out that dream. Perhaps there was shame that was put on him by his parents. I can imagine them telling him that conducting an orchestra isn’t a practical job. It won’t feed a family. Perhaps they convinced him that he wouldn’t be good enough at it to make it. There aren’t that many openings to be conductors. Why try at all if you can’t be the best?

When parents or coworkers or friends or church members or strangers tell you that you can’t do something, they are really pushing their own insecurities on you. They don’t think they can do it. They mean well, usually. They think they are saving you from the pain of failure. But really, they are killing you.

Not being who you were created to be is the worst kind of death. It is a death within life. Depression comes from being suppressed. It comes from your true nature being denied.

This doesn’t mean that you have to quit your job and move to Tibet. This doesn’t mean you need to find a job at a non-profit. This doesn’t mean that you have to stop reading fluffy romance books.

Or maybe it does.

This means that it is a good idea to realize that life is short and it is time to really think about what you are doing and where you are going. This means that it is time to give your dreams a try. This means that now is a good time to be yourself, really you, and not what everybody else thinks you should be.

Sometimes what we do to fill our time is just a distraction. We think we need to read the latest bestseller, watch the latest TV series, or buy that new dress that the movie star was wearing.

When we do this, we are being zombies. In a very amusing podcast called Paradosis by Father John Hainsworth, an Orthodox priest, he talks about what it is to be human by using zombies as an example of what it means to NOT be human.

He tells us that zombies look human, but they aren’t. What separates zombies from humans is their appetite. They are mindless in their need to consume. They will do anything to fill their appetite.

How are we different from zombies when we are mindless consumers, having to buy into the latest trend? How are we different from zombies when we sleepwalk through our lives, just going through our routines? How are we different from zombies when we aren’t truly alive to who we were made to be?

It is hard to wake up. It is hard to know what we want, and who we are, really. It is so easy to just go with the herd and be part of the mooing masses. But who wants to be a cow, led to the slaughter?