Closing Words

Moonrise over Lanikai Beach, Oahu, HI

It had to come: my last day   of sabbatical. What
shall I say to mark this ending? How does one
close out a blog?

There are still so many   things I want to write
about.  So many images and experiences to work with   and explore and describe.

But as I've written these posts over the past three months I've had Annie Dillard's The Writing Life echoing in the back of my mind. She goes on and on about taking out sentences and paragraphs, about jettisoning what you think is the best-written part, the key passage, and starting over. Then she quotes Thoreau, who said, "The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or perchance a palace or temple on earth, and at length the middle-aged man concludes to build a wood-shed within them."

Before I began each post I dreamed of writing a bridge to the moon. But now I know it's better to watch the moon and aim for the wood-shed. Even so, perhaps I have written too much. Or not enough about the right things.

I wanted to write about my dog, Sam, and the ways his company during my weeks at home filled my spirit. How he encouraged me to play out back and go on long walks. How his whole face brightens when the neighborhood children run down the hill from the school bus. How he stops for babies. And chases cats. And fetches the paper first thing in the morning. I wish I could have written about him.

I wanted to write about the inspiring women I've seen along my way, women who remind me of the Woman at the Well in her later years.  The older, finely-dressed African American woman at a church I visited who held a tambourine in one hand--which she shook throughout the service. The elderly Hispanic woman who sat with her eyes closed in the healing waters of Ojo Caliente, her arms stretched out before her as if in prayer position. Surely these women have lived long enough to see their share of troubles. Yet they struck me as people who have heard and believed some good news along the way. I wish I could have written about them.

Kilauea Volcano, The Big Island, HI

I wanted to write about Hawaii.  How you can drive from a gorgeous, calm beach to the world's most active volcano in two hours. How people who have lived there for many years still go around taking pictures of plants and sunsets. How you can walk out on a field of lava that stretches to the ocean and witness sea turtles resting in a cove.  I wish I could have written about the awe that overwhelmed me there.

But I will save these things for another time and place. Or share them with you, dear readers, in person. And then I will listen to your stories. I will look forward to two-way, personal exchanges.

"For every time there is a season," says Ecclesiastes.  My sabbatical season has ended just as the season of Advent has begun. So I will return to church tomorrow to wait for the new birth I know is coming, to anticipate the living promise of a God whose word I have never trusted so much.

Ending and Beginning

Lanikai Beach: Where Heaven Meets the Sea

I am embarrassed to admit this, but I was a bit weepy before I flew to Hawaii last Saturday. Tears appeared at unexpected times and places. This trip marks the end of my sabbatical and in some ways that makes me sad. So there I was, crying about going to Hawaii. Please.

But I'm starting to see that there's another cause for the tears: gratitude for the people around me. Whenever I try to express my gratefulness to people who have made this time apart possible, I get choked up. It happened when I thanked the organizers of the Contemplative Outreach of Hawaii prayer retreat I went to earlier this week. It happens when I write postcards to people at United Church of Chapel Hill who've worked hard to manage my areas of ministry. It happens when I think about my husband taking care of the kids and keeping up with his extraordinary range of professional responsibilities all the while. A friend of mine told me her husband would let her go to Hawaii by herself for a week, "but he'd be gritting his teeth the whole time." Steve hasn't done that--quite the opposite.

Then there's The Louisville Institute who funded this experience. The friends I've spent time with. The teachers and guides I've had. The list goes on and on.

And I have developed a deeper, broader gratitude for God than I've ever known. I cry when I think about that, too.  As is my frequent habit, I began this sabbatical with more trust in my own plans than in God's grace and guidance and wonder. But I think I've finally begun to give God a little more credit. And more room. And more thanks. I hope.


Yes, this trip marks an ending. But it also marks a beginning. 

In Transition

"Everything changes in the next day's light," sings Steve Forbert in his poignant song,  "Autumn This Year." As leaves fall to the ground like radiant beacons of impermanence, it's hard not to be aware of changes from one day to the next. In the natural world--and in life. 


"Let me guess: you're in transition," said the leader of the Intuition seminar to a room full of people she had never met.  The Kripalu Yoga Center presenter, Aruni Nan Futuronsky, was right. We were all in some kind of transition. In our relationships with loved ones, in our callings, in our own bodies.

I was transitioning into these precious three months of renewal when I attended that seminar. Now I'm transitioning out of sabbatical. I'm in my last week--at least my last week in the continental U.S.  I fly to Hawaii on Saturday for a retreat on welcoming prayer, followed by a week with my family to explore a bit of Hawaii's rich history and landscape. I'll be back at the church on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. The transition has begun.


But maybe the transition never ended. One thing I've become more aware of during these past few months is that every day is full of transitions. It's how you practice them that matters. 

In yoga classes the teachers often tell us to shift from one pose to another with as little unnecessary movement as possible. To be sure we're stable before we move. To pay attention as we lift our right foot from a standing position back to a lunge position. To land lightly.




"Every step is a step of faith," one yoga teacher said.  That's how I intend to practice the steps of my transition: with faith in the God whose love, unchanging day to day from the beginning, created the ground beneath my feet.

Listening to the Rain Speak

Courtesy of FreeFoto.com

"I hope it's raining when I wake up," my daughter said last night.  Anna loves to hear the sound of raindrops on the roof as she rises from sleep.  This morning she got her wish.

As I've thought about what it means to behold creation over these past few months, I realize Anna is on to something. Beholding is not just about seeing. It's about touching. And listening. On a sunny day I gaze in wonder at the splendor of an oak tree. I pick up a crisp, orange-splattered leaf and run my thumb over its veins. On a day like today I just listen to the tireless tap of a steady autumn rain.

In his essay, "Rain and the Rhinoceros," Thomas Merton calls the rain the most comforting speech in the world.  Maybe that's why my daughter likes to hear it first thing in the morning. The rain reminds her that she is not alone. It audibly connects her with a source of life beyond herself, with what some might call the hum of creation. I think of it as the love song of God.

The kind of gentle rain we're having now is the kind that keeps us company. It fends off loneliness and fear of drought.  It reassures us with a rhythm whose mysterious beat we will never quite understand, a rhythm not of our own making. With its soothing voice the rain coaxes us into accepting that someone else is in charge. And then it makes us feel good about that truth.

"It will talk as long as it wants, this rain," says Merton. "As long as it talks I am going to listen."

Me, too.

All the Saints

Mosaic of St. Francis
El Santuario de Chimayo, New Mexico

It's All Saints Day, a day to remember all those who have have gone before us to eternal life.  I'm thinking about the immense cloud of witnesses that surrounds us. I'm thinking about saints named and unnamed, from the past to the present. I'm thinking about St. Francis of Assisi and the Woman at the Well. 


I saw a lot of St. Francis images in New Mexico, mostly at Catholic churches, like the Sanctuary of Chimayo. But I even saw one in the sanctuary of First Presbyterian Church, Santa Fe, the oldest Presbyterian church in New Mexico. Protestants respect the saints recognized by the Catholic Church, but we don't often place figures of those saints in our worship spaces--or in any of our spaces, for that matter. In Protestant theology, anyone who is part of the body of Christ is a saint.


The truth is that many Protestants love St. Francis.  We love the story of his conversion from a rich, wild city youth to a poor country monk. "I have been all things unholy," he said. "If God can work through me God can work through anyone." We love the famous prayer attributed to him, "Instrument of Thy Peace." We love his sense of communion with the natural world, how he called the sun, wind, air and fire his brothers and the moon, stars and water his sisters.  We love the stories of his friendships with all the animals, even the fierce wolf.  


As I reflect on what it is to live a holy life this side of heaven, I am helped by the example of at least one of the well-known saints of history. And I'm happy for St. Francis to be the one. 

Samaritan Woman at the Well, He Qi, China

But I'm also aware of all the saints whose names I'll never know, like the name of the Samaritan woman who gave Jesus a cup of water and received the water of life in return.  This woman was an outcast in her own society, first for being a woman and second for having had five husbands and living with a sixth man without getting married. She was recognized by no one. She had no resources, no credibility, no leverage, even among Jesus' followers. Because of an ancient rivalry, Jews were supposed to despise Samaritans. Yet in Christ's eyes this woman was worthy of an endless river of love.  She was a woman on her way to the city of  God. She was a saint.


The Samaritan woman reminds me to think about all the forgotten people God does not forget. She reminds me that grace, not belief, makes us saints.  So today I'm pausing to remember the homeless man who was murdered in Santa Fe in early October.  And the victims of murder and violence in my own state. And the 25,000 children around the world who die each day from hunger. And those in Haiti whose lives have been claimed by cholera. . .


The list of all the saints goes on and on. God rest their souls. 

Searching for the Key

"I am in crisis" were the first words out of my mouth on my last morning in New Mexico.  I could not find the key to my rental car anywhere. I was two hours away from Albuquerque, where my flight home was scheduled to depart at 10:50 am. I had precious little time to look.

I was staying at Ojo Caliente, home of the oldest natural hot springs in the country. Thousands of people have soaked in these waters over the centuries, searching for healing and rejuvenation. As I sat in the warmest pool under a canopy of stars, I could see why. A deep sense of peace and gratitude filled me to the brimming point, and I went to bed thanking God for all the gifts I'd been given on my trip.

All of that evaporated at 6:15 am, when I was about to take my things out to the car. The key was not in my purse. It was not in my suitcase. It was not in any of my pockets.

My mind raced from the past to the future as I tried to piece together where I might have left the key and imagined what the weekend would look like if I missed my flight. All the time and energy I had spent throughout my sabbatical on being fully present in the moment was put to the test--and I didn't do so well.

I was aware of the current moment just enough to realize that I had no choice but to pick up the red security phone and call for help.  Since it was so early, the lobby was closed. But the phone on the wall outside was available for an emergency. Which I was in.

"Can you pick a lock?," I asked the calm, young Hispanic man who answered the phone and came to my assistance. I figured I had locked my key in the car. Where else could it be? I had only been at Ojo for twelve hours, and the place wasn't that big. I was running out of ideas.

It took a few tries, but my savior managed  to get a coat hanger through the window on the driver's side and down around the door handle. I praised him for his brilliance. But the key wasn't there. 


I retraced my steps, back to the restaurant where I ate supper. Surely my key did not just spontaneously fall out of my purse, but again, I was out of ideas. The restaurant was deserted except for a handful of guests gathered around the early morning coffee service the hotel provided.  Frantic energy must have radiated from me in large waves as I looked; it didn't take long before one of the other hotel guests asked me what I was looking for.

"We found a key to a rental car yesterday in one of the chairs in the lobby, and turned it into the front desk," he said, to my joy and relief.  I never would have guessed it, but my key had slipped out of my pocket when I sat down to retrieve my boarding pass from my laptop.  The guard opened up the lobby for me and handed me my way home.

Thanks to the kindness of strangers and sheer Providence I made it to Albuquerque with time to spare--and with a sweet security guard scratching his head at the half-crazed anglo woman who pulled out of the parking lot.

As I've reflected on my anxious search for the car key, I've thought about all the other searches I've been on.  For integration of mind, body and spirit. For deeper relationship with God and neighbors. For meaning and understanding. I've thought about all the books on spiritual growth I've collected that involve the words "journey," "quest," and "seek."  I've thought about my longing to spend time in "Nature Out There," as Lyanda Lynn Haupt calls it, instead of in my own back yard.  And it's dawned on me that I've been looking for all kinds of keys.

The truth is that while they may be hidden from view, the keys aren't that far away.  I just have to give up the notion that I can find them on my own, and learn to receive them. Even from people and places I will never see again.  "Sometimes I need only to stand wherever I am to be blessed," writes Mary Oliver in her poem, "It Was Early."  I'm still looking for a lot of keys, but Oliver has handed me one of them.

When the first leg of my flight back to Raleigh stopped in Orlando, the flight attendants announced that there was a special boy and his family on board: Marcos,  a Make A Wish Foundation recipient.  The passengers burst into applause as we pulled up to the gate, all of us suddenly more acutely aware of the fragility of life. And the gift. And the relative insignificance of whatever we had been through to get to the airport that morning.

I thanked God for a safe trip.  For the moment, that was enough.

The Slow Lane

Trail marker, Ghost Ranch

I've been called something I've never been called before: a slow person. I was in line at the grocery store, and the man in front of me had a form to fill out; that took some time. My transaction was a bit complicated, too. As I was picking up my bags I heard the cashier ask the man behind me how he was. "Not so good," he said. "There are all these slow people in front me!"

I almost laughed out loud. Back in college I used to say, "The fast lane is not for me." Yet in many ways the fast lane is exactly where I've lived.

True confession: years ago, before I got married and had kids, I racked up three speeding tickets in one year. As a result I received a harsh note from the DMV telling me that I was "a danger to yourself and others." DMV required my presence at a special session for people like me. The room was full of the broadest cross-section of society I have ever been privy to in terms of age, ethnicity and profession. All of us traveling in the fast lane, a danger to ourselves and those around us.

The officer leading the session presented us with terrifying facts about highway fatalities. As we silently absorbed the information, the truth of the letter we had received began to sink in. But what I recall more than anything is the officer's fury at the people he pulled over who, when he asked them how fast they thought they were driving, simply said, "I don't know."

"You have to know how fast you're going!," he shouted at us.

I've thought about that statement often. I keep a much more careful eye on my speedometer now, but I don't always keep an eye on my other movements through the day. I often speed from one task or thought to another, hardly taking a breath, completely unaware of how fast I'm going.

"To move slowly and deliberately through the world, attending to one thing at a time, strikes us as radically subversive,  even un-American," says Belden Lane. "That is our poverty." We are, perhaps, inspired by the story of the naturalist Louis Agassiz who said he spent one summer traveling--only to get half-way across his back yard.  But we could never imagine moving that slowly ourselves.

Yet as I've experimented with moving slightly more slowly over these past few months I find myself actually enjoying it. I identify with other slow people and I have more patience for anyone who can't get around too quickly.  The slow lane is not as boring as I feared. In fact, it has a lot to offer.

The fast part of me isn't gone. I can hear my own voice in the voice of the impatient man at the grocery store. I used to be impatient with slow people and sometimes I still am. I used to be impatient with myself and sometimes I still am.

My shadow on the labyrinth,
St. Francis Cathedral Basilica, Santa Fe

But I'm developing a greater appreciation for the wisdom of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who advised us to cultivate a patient trust in ourselves and in the slow work of God.  We are impatient in everything to reach the end without delay, he said. The intermediate stages are essential, however. The key is not to force anything but to trust that our own ideas will mature over time, through circumstance and grace. And to trust that in the process God's hand is slowly forming a new spirit within us.

It's slow going, but I'm starting to trust.

Living into the Questions

Chimney Rock, at Ghost Ranch

"Why do you keep talking about your New Mexico?," my thirteen-year-old son wants to know. He doesn't say, "your New Mexico trip." Just "your New Mexico." I think he's on to something.

The sum total impact of my trip was more than equal to its parts. "My New Mexico" was about the rocks and the trees and the quiet and the pure logistics of travel, but it was about much more than that.

In large part it was about changing the questions I've been asking myself and living into the answers. When I wrote the proposal for my sabbatical grant from the Louisville Institute I said that I wanted to use this time apart from my responsibilities at my church to explore who I am before God.  New Mexico's vast, stark and beautiful landscape challenged me to revise that question.

Now I'm asking,  "Who God is before me, and what is my response? 


Sheer cliffs surrounded by miles of flat, rocky ground force one to consider relinquishment. To let go of the ego. To empty out distracting thoughts. To shift the self out of the center of things and die to one's neurotic need for affirmation. I do not plan to move to the desert, but even a few days there prompted me to reflect on what God might be calling me to give up. Part of the answer I received is how I frame my questions. Instead of starting with me, I need to start with God.

Aspens in Santa Fe ski basin. 

It is a central paradox of desert experience that only that which dies can live again, writes Belden Lane.  He goes on to tell the story of an old monk who had lived in the desert for many years. Due to his failing health he had to move back to the community to be cared for. The move brought him great sorrow because it was the desert that taught him how to die to all the grasping and attention-seeking compulsions of his ego. The desert taught him how to live with a liberated soul.

Like the desert mothers and fathers in Christian tradition, and like Christ himself, yogi masters emphasize dying in order to be born.  In fact, the most important and yet most difficult pose is called "corpse pose," savasana. At the end of each yoga session we literally practice dying. For at least five minutes we lie flat on our backs with our eyes closed, our bodies as relaxed as we can manage, our hands facing the sky. We practice letting go of effort. We practice letting go of our impulse to run from what scares us.  We practice surrendering to the floor beneath us, and beneath that to a God who will always catch us.

Pine amidst aspens, Santa Fe ski basin. 

During savasana, yoga teachers always come over to me and gently push on the front of my shoulders, which invariably float off the floor even when I'm lying down.  As much as I crave the stillness of those last five minutes of class, I resist them. I don't want to "die a little every day," as one well-known teacher says we must do. Or "lose my life to gain it," as Jesus says.  So I push my shoulders forward, as if that posture could keep me in control. Yet in my more lucid moments I know that letting go of control is the path God sets before me, and I'm grateful for the chance to keep practicing--physically and spiritually.

"The point is to live everything. Live the questions now," Ranier Maria Rilke said. "Perhaps then, some day far in the future you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."

As I continue considering the significance of "my New Mexico," I will take Rilke's counsel to heart.

Living with Contradictions

Sunrise view from my hermitage.

I bought groceries at Wal-Mart on the way to my three-day retreat at Casa del Sol, an extension of Ghost Ranch.  I have never purchased groceries at Wal-Mart before, and I certainly wasn't planning to buy them there as I headed to the quiet and stunning context of a hermitage in Abiqui, but I was out of options. Espanola, thirty miles south of Abiqui, is the closest town with any major stores. I drove by the Shop and Save, thinking I'd find something a little  more local--like the southwest version of Harris Teeter. No such luck.

The Wal-Mart was busy. I was so overwhelmed by the quantity of stuff and the noise and the crowd that instead of buying a box of granulated sugar for my coffee I bought powdered sugar (the verdict: it'll do the trick in a pinch).

Later I learned that Espanola, whose nickname is "The Jewel of Northern New Mexico," has a long and rich history of cultural diversity and is an up and coming town in the region. A majority of the residents are documented immigrants whose votes matter to politicians. President Obama campaigned there when he was running for office; President Clinton spoke there last week to support the Democratic candidate for governor of New Mexico.

Espanola is also one of the poorest cities in New Mexico. The estimated median income in 2008 was $33,867.  Beside nearby Los Alamos National Laboratories, the public schools and the hospital, Wal-Mart is one of the largest employers. Sadly, Espanola consistently rates as one of the cities with the most drug overdoses per capita; health officials are engaged in what some call an "epic battle" with heroin use.

If you can't stop, wave as you go, read a sign outside an auto repair shop I passed. I thought about that message throughout my stay at Casa del Sol.  I thought about the people who have to shop at Wal-Mart, who struggle to make a living, who are wooed by politicians and sometimes try to forget it all by using drugs. I thought about the contradictions, too, between my privileged worries about where I buy my food and worries that are far more grave.

On the trail to Box Canyon.

In the midst of rocks that are millions of years old and a landscape that is as terrifying as it is beautiful, one wonders if God really cares about one's "shop locally" commitment.  I felt so small out there, almost irrelevant.  As Presbyterian minister Belden Lane writes in The Solace of Fierce Landscapes, "The desert reduces one to raw-boned simplicity. You quickly come to the end of what you have depended on to give continuity and meaning to your life."

Yet fierce landscape also confronts one with the reality that everything matters. One false step up on the mesa and life is over; more than one hiker has perished that way. Water use matters. Use of any resource at all matters. How you inhabit your place on earth matters to the life all around you.

One afternoon I visited the Benedictine Monastery of Christ in the Desert, thirteen miles down a dirt road. It took an hour to go those thirteen miles, so I was in no rush to get back to my hermitage. I read in the meditation garden and hung out in the gift shop long enough to overhear a conversation about the organic hops the monks are growing for a new ale they're planning to sell; again, it's hard to make a living out there. Then I went to the afternoon service, Terce, at 3:30, which consisted mostly of sung psalms and ended with praise to the triune God, world without end. Gazing up through the sanctuary's windows at the cliffs soaring above, those words about the endless world rang as true as they ever had.

On the way back from the  monastery I stopped by the Chama river and took a picture of a cottonwood tree, a reminder, it seemed, of the contradictions surrounding me. Beautiful things grow in the desert. Monks sing psalms in the middle of the afternoon in the middle of nowhere. God is like a rock, and God is as unknowable as the desert. That landscape was large enough to hold all these things in tension. Large enough to embrace all the contradictions. Large enough to suggest that possibility to me.

Witnesses to the Wild

Sculpture by Peter Woytuk, Ghost Ranch, Santa Fe
Picture by Susan Steinberg

"I want to cocreate and inhabit a nation of watchers, of naturalists-in-progress, none of us perfect, all sharing in the effort of watching, knowing, understanding, protecting and living well alongside the wild life with whom we share our cities, our neighborhoods, our households, our yards, our ecosystems, our earth,"  writes Lyanda Lynn Haupt in her compelling and beautifully written book, Crow Planet: Essential Wisdom from the Urban Wilderness. 


As there is one crow for every five to ten humans, or about one crow per family, the crow is our most accessible link to native wild life, Haupt says. Whether we like it or not, crows offer us an opportunity to watch and learn and change--to be attentive to our "inevitable continuity with life on earth, and the gorgeous knowledge this entails."

I have never thought of crows as a link to the natural world, but of course Haupt is right. I read her book on the way to New Mexico a few days ago, and now I see crows everywhere. There are crows in the trees outside my window and crows hopping around in the parking lot of the main post office across the street.  I presume there are crows in the canyons north of Santa Fe (I hope to find out this week during my stay at Casa del Sol), as Georgia O'Keefe titled one of her paintings, "Canyon with Crows."  In the sculpture garden outside the place I'm staying, Ghost Ranch Santa Fe, the artist placed huge metal crows all around--surely inspired by the real thing.

I was so taken by Haupt's argument that developing as a naturalist is one of the most critical tasks for modern humans, last night I went to a talk by Con Slobodchikoff, who has written an in-depth study of prairie dogs. To my surprise, the room was packed. A man running for New Mexico's Land Commissioner went around the room introducing himself to everyone, including out-of-state guests like me; this was an educational event and  a political event. First Dr. Slobodchikoff made us say his last name together, then he went on to tell us about his fascinating and sobering research. I had no idea how endangered prairie dogs are, how smart they are, how cruel human beings have been to them and how little we understand them.

Like our relationship with crows, our relationship with prairie dogs is a microcosm of larger problems in humanity's relationship with the wild. And an opportunity. Dr. Slobodchikoff is hopeful we can change. So is Lynn Haupt.  We live in a kairos moment, she says, a time of crisis that is also an opportune time--a time brimming with meaning and creative response.

Stand in a lineage, with a sense of purpose, Haupt encourages us. Be a witness to the wild, like so many who have gone before us, from Aristotle to Rachel Carson. Cultivate questions, carry a notebook, be patient, take binoculars but not much more. You don't need a lot of special gadgetry to be a naturalist--just a good portion of curiosity and a commitment to be transformed by watching.

Working with the Whole Package

We are a package deal, the yoga teacher said the other day. "Have you ever noticed," he went on, "that you are very good at some things, even excel at them, but can't do other things very well at all?" Yes, I've noticed. I have limits. I am learning to work with them.

In another yoga class recently I said out loud for the first time, "I can't do a back bend." The thing is, I can do a back bend, or "wheel" as the yogis say.  But I know that because of my back condition if I arch like a wheel I will end up hurting myself. So I have to take the long view and practice saying "I can't do that." It's hard--but it's getting easier.

Hang out a degree away from the edge, a physical therapist told me recently. Some yoga teachers will encourage students to hang out in a difficult pose for what feels like eternity, on the edge between discomfort and pain. No teacher wants you to hurt yourself. But teachers do want you to explore discomfort a bit and see if you can sit with it for a minute or two. That's good practice for life. Except if your adductor is strained. Then you have to shy away from the discomfort/pain edge and shift to the edge between an acceptable stretch and self harm. I'm practicing that, too.

Know your limits, my class dean, Pamela Daniels, said at our twenty-fifth college reunion in June. She spoke at our graduation as well, and revisited her own words from 1985--and her reference then to Jack Gilbert's poem, "The Abnormal is Not Courage." Courage, says Gilbert, is "the thing steady and clear, then the crescendo. . . not the surprise, but the amazed understanding." Twenty-five years later, Dean Daniels still stands by those words. But she urged us now, in mid-life, to consider the arduousness of making choices. She advised us to revisit our dreams and dare to be fully ourselves in the context of new self-knowledge, realistic complexity and logistical challenges.  Respect the givens, she said, because we can only do so much in a given day.

Our wisdom in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves, wrote the great Reformed theologian John Calvin. In his wildest dreams I'm sure Calvin never could have imagined a female pastor applying his theology to the practice of yoga and the experience of mid-life. But I keep coming back, gratefully, to Calvin's definition of wisdom.

I met with a seasoned yoga teacher one-on-one several weeks ago. She understood my back issues and led me through a sequence of modified poses that took those issues into account. Afterwards I actually felt more confident and free. I knew how to work with my own particular package deal more carefully and precisely, and that was a huge help. Maybe in some small way that's the kind of thing Jack Gilbert meant by "the amazed understanding."  I have resisted limits for the longest time but now I am amazed to understand that working with them has its benefits.

Outer Noise/Inner Noise

I was having one of those mornings in which everything seems to flow gracefully from one activity to the next. Rose early to write and pray. Woke up the kids with the dog gleefully leading the way into each of their rooms. Ate a good breakfast  and biked to yoga. Arrived early and took my time stretching out before class. Biked home, got cleaned up and went right to my office with the pretty upstairs view of our trees and our street. Opened the windows to let in the glorious fall breeze. I had never been so ready to write.

At the same moment I pushed the window pane up the power washer company showed up two doors down.  The noise was deafening. Our house shook.  I could not possibly sit at my desk with the windows open. I could not even sit on that side of our house. I had to move as far away from the maddening sound as possible.

As I settled into my second-choice seat at the kitchen table I remembered that people who teach centering prayer have some tips about handling noise.  Father Thomas Keating, for instance, talks about the natural stream of consciousness kind of noise we all experience when we try to be still and focus on our connection with God. He describes this kind of noise as a gentle conversation with a beloved friend. We should welcome and expect that kind of noise.

But there is another kind of attention-grabbing noise that absorbs us and pulls us away from our conversation, as if there is a window open and we hear an accident on the street below and get up to go see what's going on.  When we get distracted like that we re-focus by going back to our seat, excusing ourselves for interrupting the conversation, and carry on.

If that technique works with interior noise, I thought, perhaps it can work with exterior noise as well.  I could respond to the reverberating drone of the power washer by being totally consumed by it, or I could respect my neighbors for taking care of their house and bring my attention back to my original project. That morning offered a great opportunity to experiment.

And it worked, at least for a while.  I concentrated on my writing project so hard that I barely noticed when the power washer stopped.

Then the tree removal service showed up at the house across the street.  This time I surrendered to the noise and decided it was a good time to take the dog for a walk.

Considering the Lily

Consider the lily. That's what the screen on my new cell phone says, above a picture of a daylily from the garden in front of my house. My old cell phone said, "Consider the lilies," but there wasn't room for all those letters on my upgrade. So I'm down to reflecting on a single lily.

I am trying to do one thing at a time these days, so the modification of Jesus' wise counsel fits. Slowing down is the great gift--and challenge--of having the freedom to establish my own daily rhythm. I can do one thing at time. When I pray, I pray. When I walk the dog, I walk the dog. When I visit with a friend, I visit with a friend.

It's not always easy to be fully present and focused.  I'm used to multi-tasking and running behind schedule at least half the time. I still feel the pull of that rushed, always-plugged-in existence. A recent study says that it takes three days to unplug completely. But that's if you're out in the wilderness. How long does it take when you're in your own house? I'll let you know.

God created us with minds that work better when we turn our complete attention to the task, the person or the project in front of us.  One at a time. The lilies are gone now, but I'm going to practice by shutting off my cell phone and considering the leaves--I mean leaf.

Renewed by Surprise

I haven't ever sought out a drum circle. Nor have I ever participated in a program led by a man with dredlocks all the way down his back. I did both those things at Kripalu and found myself renewed in a way I'll never forget.

"Let's make some noise at this yoga center!," said our leader, Shaun J. Laframboise, of the KDZ Drummers. Shaun or one of his colleagues lead drum circles at least once a week at Kripalu. Guests looking for some release from all the quiet and intentionality can pull up a seat--and a hand drum.

I almost didn't go, but at the last minute decided to give it a try. I have a list of four practices I find renewing (see the description of my sabbatical plans at the top of the blog), and drum circle isn't on it.  I had my doubts.

"When you put two grandfather clocks in a room together," Shaun told us, their pendulums eventually start swinging in sync. No one knows why. The only theory that has held up over time is that things go better when we work together.

The same is true with drumming, an ancient form of community building practiced around the world. When people repeat even the most basic rhythms together something mysterious happens: they get in tune with each other and with themselves. As the beat goes on, people smile. They laugh. Sometimes they cry. There's a sacred, elemental, moving quality to drumming that draws out the spirit of life.

As I got more comfortable with the rhythm Shaun taught us, I closed my eyes.  I didn't want to see the other participants. I just wanted to listen to my own beat, in tune with theirs. At least for the moment.

"May you be surprised by what finds you," someone said, just as my sabbatical began. I already have been.

Minister on the Mat

I'm back from Kripalu, reflecting and reflecting. . . There were moments on the trails I walked around Kripalu's beautiful property when I wanted to shout, "God is good!" That's the one-sentence summary of my experience. I loved the gentle morning yoga. I loved the guided hikes and the bike ride through Stockbridge.  Much to my surprise, I loved the drum circle (more on that, later). I loved the healthy food, the silent breakfasts, and the conversations over lunch and dinner with other guests or volunteers. I will cherish all these things in my heart for some time to come.

Morning coffee was the only issue. They didn't serve any in the expansive cafeteria. All kinds of juices, teas, filtered water, locally-made apple cider could be yours--as much as you want. But no coffee. So I stood in line at the small cafe downstairs, with all the other people who weren't quite ready to give up caffeine. In the old days, which coffee-drinking Kripalu staff call "B.C."--before coffee--you couldn't even buy a cup on the premises. People would bring in instant, like contraband, and slip it into their hot water. Or sneak a bike excursion to town for a latte.

I got into yoga by way of an injury, or as I like to think of it, a humbling.  My body wouldn't do what I wanted it to do, and finally let me know: out on a run one day, my piriformis popped. The pain was breathtaking--and as I eventually learned a sign of a back condition, which along with a piriformis, I did not know I had, spondylolisthesis.

I used to run a lot, and sometimes I would feel a kind of cohesion between my body, my breath,  the natural world and God that I did not experience in other kinds of activity. When the running had to stop I was left with a longing for the same experience of cohesion. Eventually I found my way to the floor, in child's pose on a yoga mat.

Yoga, which means to unite, join, harness or yoke, was developed thousands of years ago as a way to prepare for meditation; it is a practice intended to sharpen our awareness and dispose us to receive grace. Which so many of us seem to need.

At Kripalu I met someone who got into yoga when his father died; I met someone else who was on a retreat with a group of relief workers from Haiti; I took a class from a beautiful woman who told us she'd spent six years of her life on crutches, and that the best yoga class she'd ever taken was taught by a woman who had MS. I read testimony from a firefighter who was on duty on 9/11, and came to Kripalu  several months later. Grief, trauma, injury--something humbles us, and we end up on the mat longing for stillness and, as one priest put it,  for "reestablishment of contact with the body."

Kripalu yoga is named after a beloved Indian religious leader, Swami Kripalvananda, who lived from 1913-1981, the last four of those years at the original Kripalu center in Pennsylvania. His name means"The Compassionate One," so the form of yoga named after him is rooted in compassion: compassion for the self and compassion for others. As we practice the yoga poses this way, learning to treat our bodies with compassion a little more each time, we open ourselves to the possibility of unity, at least in fleeting moments, with a God who looks on us with compassion all the time.

When I showed my eleven-year-old daughter the Kripalu Web site, she said, "That looks like a place you would like; it would drive me crazy!" Yoga is not for everyone.  But my daughter was right: I did like Kripalu. No, I loved it.

Getting Lost

On my first full day of sabbatical I got lost. I was on my way to Kripalu, envisioning myself sinking into the mat and taking lots of deep breaths during the afternoon yoga class, when it dawned on me there was no way I was going to get there in time.  The woman at the Budget rental car desk at the Albany, NY airport told me, "I can get you to Lenox!" If only I had followed her directions. I was supposed to take three turns but only took two, so instead of going east I went south.

Fortunately, I realized I was heading to New York City rather than The Berkshires at a good point to turn around: a bridge across the Hudson River, which took me to the Taconic Parkway.
The day was beautiful and so was the drive; I even stopped at one of the overlooks and took a picture. Barbara Brown Taylor's chapter about the practice of getting lost, in An Altar in the World, came to mind.

Getting lost can be a spiritual practice, Taylor says, if you are willing to approach it that way, and let it bring you to your knees, show you what is real and remind you how close God can be when you've lost your way. I knew I did not want to arrive at a yoga center all tense and frazzled, so as I drove I experimented with my approach: rather than berate myself for missing a turn or lament the two hours I missed at Kripalu as a result, I gave thanks for the unexpected twist--and for the time to be lost in the beauty of God's creation.

Blessed With Stones

I received several thoughtful gifts yesterday during the sabbatical blessing at the end of the church service, and one curious gift: a bag of stones. Then when I got home, my family had a few presents for me, too. I picked up the first one, and knew what it was before I opened it: more stones! I confess I struggled to interpret the message behind these gifts. "Blessings on your sabbatical: have some stones." Then I read the description that came with the bag: each stone was given by a child. Like the children, the stones are unique and beautiful in their own way. As the card said, "Ideally, the stones will be tactile reminders of our love for you." Then I looked at the stones my family gave me. One said "Peace" and the other said "Joy." I added those stones to the children's stones, as tactile reminders of my love and prayer for them. I will dip my hands into this collection of stones often over the next three months, giving thanks to God for community, grace and the mystery of creation. As I begin this time apart, I couldn't have asked for a more perfect gift.

Making Room

I have been making room--physically and spiritually--in spite of myself and, in some small ways, intentionally. Sabbatical feels like a time to open up space to receive the mysteries of God's grace. If you don't have the space, grace might bounce back to the sender. I ordered some new, colorful binders made from recycled materials, from a place called "Naked Binders." An apt description for the three months ahead! As I put the new binders in my study, I let go of a stack of documents, along with a few boxes of books. While I was in the mood to clean out, I put a bottle of laundry detergent we've had for months in the car; we can't use it because it's not HE (I failed to read the fine print, which seems to get harder and harder to do). I took it to the local "waste convenience center" and left it on the shelf designated for reusable items. The kind man who works there told me, "someone will pick it up." I hope so. And I'm thankful for a place to transfer things I don't need--so that I can make room.

Balance

This morning as we prepared to enter tree pose, the yoga teacher told us that balance takes practice. Most people don't just take one foot off the floor and rest it against the knee of the opposite leg. You have to work at that! Some days it's easier than others, and often one side is more balanced than another. But practice helps. That's what sabbatical feels like at this point (ten days before it begins): an opportunity to practice balance.