Back from a Break

Observant readers might have noticed that I have been absent from stillvoicing for that last number of weeks. Some of you who know more of my life than others may have suspected that this is because of my broken elbow. This is, in fact, correct. My writing has been restricted by a broken elbow incurred the Saturday before Palm Sunday. I had surgery on Easter Sunday (all quiet in the hospital that day). I was in a cast for two and a half weeks after that. The cast disabled my ability to type but it did not impend my opportunities to learn, and so I share with you three important lessons acquired while in a restricted modality of life.

First lesson: go slow. The first bit of advice from my orthopedic surgeon to me after my surgery was “Don’t fall!” He repeated that after the removal of my cast. It was a fall that broke my elbow. While on a run I hit a patch of ice and took the full weight of my body on my right elbow. I am right dominate so the learning of going slow was nicely foisted upon me. But the good physician and my accident have commended that as a way of living. Going slow means savouring moments, and being present in the places you find yourself.

Second lesson: do less. Those of you who have broken bones or sustained other injuries know well that tasks done without any ado become impossible to do. And so, I had to learn to do less. But I had to learn to do less in a rather busy time. This happened at the end of term when marking was due. I tend to provide quite a lot of feedback on papers, which was now impossible without the ability to write or type. Instead, I made use of the audio file option on our online marking system. But the file only allows a five minute long file, and so I had to be succinct and direct in my comments. I had to do less, a practice that demanded doing what I did well. This, too, is a good life lesson, I think.

Third lesson: ask for help. I was unable to drive, and so my good wife became my chauffeuse extraordinaire. But she helped me with so much more, tying my shoes, making my meals, etc. Of course, she wasn’t the only person to help me out. Neighbours and colleagues helped me out with rides and this and that. Something as simple as having doors opened for me helped me to see that being helped is a way to affirm our common humanity and build relationships. Students, my hairdresser, and others helped me with coats, carrying things, and more. It is a humbling but humanizing thing to ask for help. I need to do this more, and I suspect most of us do.

Go slow, do less, and ask for help. These are things that my broken elbow said to me, and still says to me even while I have begun the slow process of healing. These are life lessons. I suspect I have heard these maxims before, but they have a certain gravitas now that is grounded in the source of the voice commending them: my body.

Winter’s Canvas

January beauty is
sovereign – snow
crystals command
my attention. Flakes,
each tiny and a treasure,
join together in sculptured art
even while they close roads
and shut us in.

But isn’t that what
beauty does? It arrests
us and divests us of
distractions by prying us
free from inane necessities.

Beauty slips through
the pores of my skin
and once inside decides
for me, choosing me to be
the site of resurrection.

My flesh shivers and quivers
as I see You from the inside out
now in the soft contours of winter’s canvas,
now in a melting flake flooding
my shivering porous flesh.

Behold the Flesh!

They say in prison he
preached to the dead.
In my head that makes
sense, but my soul suspects
that, in prison, the dead
preached to him, too, of
the worth of doing nothing – that
most sacred sabbath inactivity
hallowed at creation’s crown.

Where is nothing more acutely done
than among the dead, in prisons?
On this Holy Saturday sabbath,
the preaching God stays still and learns
from dying flesh, from possibilities imprisoned,
as the dead, the prisons preach to divinity, to me.

Ecce caro…

The Breath We Are

“Did you remember to breathe?”

This was the question asked by my on-line yoga instructor after having my having held a pose for a bit. I had to think. And the answer was no. I had held my breath. Yoga has invited me to think more about breath in yoga and beyond. Last fall, I recall doing a chin up and realizing I was holding my breath while raising my body. I intentionally tried to breath out going down and to breath in lifting my body. I found that I had more strength that way.

It isn’t only yogis who know the power of breath. I recall my wife, trained in kinesiology, trying to convince me to breath while pushing weights years ago. So, I ask myself, why am I inclined to hold my breath when it is not in my interest?

Breath, of course, represents so much than air moving in and out of our lungs. Breath points us to life, freedom, connectivity, etc. And so, in times of trial it seems sensible to hold tightly to these things. When life is trying, we try want to get a grip on what is valuable, meaningful, and dear to us.

But yoga reminds me that the breath cannot be held – at least not indefinitely, and the power of breath is found in receiving and releasing it both. Breath’s power is in its movement and the same is true for those things it represents. Life cannot be held in if it is to be life-giving. Freedom cannot empower if it is not shared. Connections are not strengthened save by doing what connection does: reaching out again and again.

Of course, holding your breath makes sense when under water, and in times of danger we might be inclined to hunker down and avoid both taking in and reaching out. But yoga and more are teaching me that I find strength not by holding out but by leaning into possibilities as they present themselves.

It is not, of course, accidental that God is identified with breath in sacred texts, where the divine self is not to held to be a good to be sequestered. God is Spirit, who shares and releases the divine self into us so that we can be the spirit we are and the breath we breathe by receiving and releasing both.

Prayer, Interrupted…

Prayer, interrupted… now
by my toe’s twitch; communion with
the Almighty stayed… now
by the realization that I am
double booked next Tuesday and
cannot be in two places at once unlike
the ubiquitous God, whose call
I have just dropped … now
by sleep – sometimes sneaking up on me,
sometimes evading me, me who cannot be
like divinity, neither
slumbering nor sleeping.

Prayer, interrupted, or
perhaps prayer converted
from pious pleas to
embodied aches and yearning… learning to
embrace my humanity as I
embark in a conversation
encompassing all that I do – and don’t…
my flesh now made word.

Notice What You Feel

When I was younger, I used to think it important to be strong. Now I know it is wiser to be flexible and balanced.

This applies to many levels – intellectual, spiritual, physical, etc. – but I am increasingly convinced that intellectual and spiritual insights have to be grounded in physical practices. I have always been physically active and have written in other posts about the ways in which running has been spiritually and intellectually enriching. But over the last few years I have been spending more and more time trying to keep limbs and such malleable and have mused often about trying yoga.

I decided that this recent lock-in was a good time to give it a go, and so I asked my daughters, who are my doctors in many ways, for advice and they suggested “Yoga with Adriene.” Adriene Mishler recently completed a 30-day program called “Home” and so I began watching her January 2020 series on YouTube some days ago. I just finished day 22 with the theme of “Stir.”

On day 22 Adriene made a comment that gave me pause. She said “You should not be in pain, but we do want to be in a place where we can observe sensation.” I am a beginner, but what is slowly coming to clarity for me is the goal of getting your body into a place where some new awareness of what you physically feel is evident. She often says “scan your body,” or “pay attention to what your body is saying to you,” or “notice what you feel” or like. When I was younger, I played football, where strength was king, and no-one invited us to “notice what you feel.” Numbness rather than awareness seemed to be the goal. I recall, for instance, a drill where we would jog on the spot and at the blow of a whistle fall jarringly to ground: no pain, no gain. Perhaps things have changed. I hope so.

In yoga we are invited over and over again to observe breath, body, and the beat of the heart. Balance and malleability are the collateral benefits of a practice that is about getting to know the body and so the self. There is a spiritual tradition associated with yoga, and the practice of yoga in North America has sometimes been criticized for underplaying this. I do not really know enough at this point to weigh in on the critique, but I know that the attention to the breath in my daily time with Adriene has caused me to think deeply on the breath of God: the Holy Spirit.

Next month I will be teaching an intensive course remotely called Spirit and Community. The theme of body should loom large when Christians think about community (often called the body of Christ) and the Breath that animates it. If the bible sees the body as a fit cypher for the spiritual community of Christ, then we need to take a careful look at how we apprehend the body. Although much still needs to be decided in how the course will proceed, one thing is clear to me. A healthy body is balanced and flexible. This is true for physical bodies and for communal bodies. How could it be any different for communal bodies that are Spirited?

There you sit

There You sit,

poised and praising
my vulnerability, as if
it were something
other than what
it is: my being
drawn to
You, who
lets me poke
You in the side. I
am no longer divided
by doubt but at peace with
it as You open Your self to me
and allow entrance into Your Holy
Body: bloody in a way, but more so
beautiful, as bodies are meant
to be – ruddy and ready for
this sacred pleasure.

This Nose Hunts

Not quite awake, my
body drags behind
my foggy mind.
I am dull,
here in the
dungeon of
night: my sight
is off, and a muffled
ring shrouds my hearing.
The silence of the house is
deafening – even the clock
is at sea.

But the grape on my
tongue tastes like the
troth of life and my
noses scouts about:

here, morning’s toast
there, yesterday’s curry

racing round the house, like
a cat on the loose, not to
be caught. But this nose hunts,
and now, now, I smell God:

first like baby’s skin
then like the air of a storm

taut, and sharp, like cheese blue.

Adieu Iceland

This land is continually being born:
it ever brings forth new marvels, new
vistas, new possibilities. It sings of
change, and the power of play. I feel
this playful change seeping into me,
calling for

a molten mind,
a soul on fire, and
volcanic vision – even

while ice expands the fissures of my being open
and glaciers forge fjords of futures unbidden.

This land is etching itself onto
the geography of my body:
my skin now taut with
wonder, my lips now
quivering in hope,
and my heart
erupting now as
deep calls to depth,
and I feel myself shifting
while taking leave of this
tectonically trembling Ísland.

These Arms

My arms grow longer the
older I get. My
hands droop closer to
the dirt that will
one day vest
me.

So, too, these longing
arms reach higher
to the sky,
grasping
after the sun:
the heart at the hearth
of humanity.

When these arms are long enough
they will wrap me round thrice:
for the self I was

now coming to be

and then at rest, disarmingly.