Category Archives: healing

you get what you need

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BE the thing you need.

a few weeks ago I read somewhere (on momastery.com, I thought, but now I can’t find it for the life of me) that when you find yourself desperate for X (companionship, love, acknowledgement, forgiveness, etc), you should turn around and offer that exact thing to someone else.  If you’re desperate for it, you might be lacking it in your own life, so why not turn around and help someone else not-lack?

When you feel lonely, find someone on the fringes and notice them–sit with her, buy her lunch.  When you are starved for affirmation, start looking around for people who could use a word of encouragement–smile at strangers on the street, help the person whose papers blew off his table.

It could be called “paying it forward,” or even “leaning in” (instead of letting the thing get you down, you give more out of your emptiness); ultimately, it’s taking the focus off of you and putting it on someone else–where our focus ought to be anyway.

Through giving out of our own emptiness, we often find that we get filled up ourselves (the math’s all screwy, I know, but that’s how God works–you know, feeding the 5000, the widow giving her two pennies, leaving the 99 sheep to find the 1).

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30

Healing Breath

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In practicing mindfulness and yoga, the breath is our anchor–when our minds try to tiptoe away toward distraction, we smile and gently remind our brains that our lungs are taking over for the present.

In our lives, we try to let the Holy Spirit take over.  We focus on God’s presence, God’s love surrounding us–just like the air we breathe–and we accept and let go of the other things that swirl up around us, tempting us away from the breath, distracting us from God.

Part of the breath’s power in yoga is how, during challenging poses, we imagine that as the breath and the heat it creates is being sent throughout our bodies–especially to those places that are in need of some loosening or some clearing out, allowing a deeper twist or a more complete bend.

The Holy Spirit is the Breath of Life that comes into our bodies, eager to brush out the stinky, dark bits inside us that are holding us back (or maybe that we’re holding on to).  God’s breath is the loosening, healing, heating agent of our souls.

Today, walking with my dog, I was practicing some deep breathing, and as I sometimes do, I was forcing the breath out, contracting my stomach to really squeeze out all the air–mostly because I love the energizing rush of air that rushes into my lungs afterward.  It occurred to me all at once that perhaps, just like our literal breath (and just like so many figurative, spiritual applications as I’ve found and shared above), the Holy Spirit is most ready to come in and fill us up with God’s presence and power when we’ve gotten the emptiest.

As Thomas Keating puts it, “The Gospel teaches that Christ is present in the storm, not just in emerging from the storm.”

Maranatha!

Fumble! (too soon, Duke fans?)

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Only about 30% of people even make New Year’s Resolutions anymore.  Of them only 20% manage to make a lasting change, having kept their resolution for 2 years (newrepublic.com).  On this, the third day of the new year, we’re probably already struggling with the resolutions, or intentions, or goals we’ve set for ourselves in this auspicious year of 2014.

What happens in our minds when we fumble?  When we eat  that extra helping of dessert we didn’t really quite mean to eat, or binge-watch shows that make us feel like we’d like to dip our minds in some bleach; what we say to ourselves when we fail?

Most of us (me, for one!) live under a very stressful fallacy that we can perform perfectly.  That we really can not-fail, not-fumble, not-trip-up.  We fail.  To focus on failure and on shortcomings can be debilitating.  What if we brushed the mistake off instead, took a deep breath, and bravely turned around to do something else?  So much energy is wasted in lament and guilt and self-punishment–what if we learned that we would indeed fumble and that when we fumbled, we should simply pick up the ball and try again (I think that football analogy doesn’t quite work…)?

Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)

Changing Seasons; New Year’s Challenge

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As the days of Advent dwindled this year, I saw myself grasping–begging it not to go.  There’s something sweet about the way nights have been dark and quiet with hot tea, a fire in the ‘place, and a craft project in hand.  It almost feels like we’ve been building a ship, lovingly sanding the boards, carefully melding them together, adding sail and rudder and varnish.  Now, though, the dry dock about to be filled and the supports are ready to give way, and it’s time to test all the preparation we’ve made.  We’re going into the fray, the incarnation is coming; just when waiting and preparing got really comfortable, the adventure begins.

I think I sort of forgot about the adventure, the incarnation–I preferred to ponder the waiting.  There’s not much you can do when you’re waiting, you just keep your head down, say your prayers, do your work.  When the water rushes in, you suddenly have to swim, to put to the test all the pondering, learning, and preparing you’d done.

Many autumn days (long before Advent began) felt like this, too.  There was too much that threatened to push in and change things–to make me into a new kind of person; exhausting me out of bad habits and shoving me into good ones.  I resist.  I cling to tv shows and drag my feet to yoga class.  I lie in bed in the early morning, willing myself back to sleep, though my journal, and books, and coffeemaker all lie ready to be used.  Just keep your head down, do your work, say your prayers, don’t look around.

Christmas is here, and even now (especially those of us in clericals), we begin to look forward to Epiphany, which pushes in on us with great, blinding, demanding light.  Epiphany’s a little like New Year’s–it says to us, “Here’s an enormous, dizzying, life-changing gift…  What’re you going to do with it?”  As W.H. Auden said in the poem I read in church last Sunday,

…Once again
As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed
To do more than entertain it as an agreeable
Possibility, once again we have sent Him away,
Begging though to remain His disobedient servant,
The promising child who cannot keep His word for long.

For a month in 2013, I had no job, no contract to promise a job, no illusion of my independence from God (my husband is a Ph.D. student, no real income there, either).  It was the most peaceful, joyful month of my entire life.  I knew in the deepest way possible that God was truly our only hope and foundation–my paycheck, my functioning as a parish priest, my local support network (largely), had all been asked of me if we were to continue following God’s call.  So we prayed, and we plunged.

We’re called to live in a way that our lives look insane if our triune God does not exist.