A multitude of thoughts are whirling around in my brain, but I'm not sure they're ready to come out and play yet. So in the meantime, allow me to offer you funny cat videos. I'm sitting at the library shaking with silent laughter. Hope they brighten up your day, too.
Peace, and be at peace with your thoughts and visions.
These things have to come to you and you to accept them.
This is the share of the eternal burden,
The perpetual glory. This is one moment,
But know that another
Shall pierce you with a sudden painful joy
When the figure of God’s purpose is made complete.
- T.S. Eliot
i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any – lifted from the no
of all nothing – human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
--e.e. cummings
I've been thinking a lot this week about what it means to live an embodied life.
It's not something I've done much of; it seems like all my life I've been taught to deny and ignore and even hate my body. The hatred came from a culture that told me my worth came from the way I looked and the size I wore. My inability to shrink and mold myself into the airbrushed perfection led me to loath my recalcitrant body.
Later, my sojourn through evangelical culture led me to believe that only spirit mattered. The body was, at best, a distraction from "higher things," never mentioned except in terms of what I shouldn't do (i.e. sex). As Jenell wrote today (about a slightly different topic), "First, I thought it was because they're all evangelical - so uncomfortable with the body that sexuality is hidden and comes out inappropriately." There was never any mention of the value of our physical natures.
It's with great gratitude that I realize I've spent the past few years learning to be embodied once more. How wonderful to be surrounded by people who understand that God cares about every aspect of our being and existance - including our bodies. I love being surrounded by people who love the co-op and healthy eating, yoga and pilates, massage, and frank discussions of all the things involved in being human - whether physical or mental or spiritual.
So I am learning to dwell in my body, to accept it as my home, rather than treating it as a cheap motel I'm just temporarily crashing in until I find something better. This is hard. Everything I see on tv and in print tells me I don't measure up. I'm still struggling to find the healthy balance between flesh & spirit. How do they combine? How does God speak to me through the early morning breeze or the soft melting of butter on warm bread or kissing someone I love or the pain of sore muscles after Mar's pilates class?
I'm still sick. It's just a minor cold, the kind that shouldn't even affect my life at all. Yet I just feel drained. Last night I lay on the sofa and watched 3 DVDs. No energy for anything else.
Being sick makes me melancholy. All evening I kept wishing there was someone who would go make me tea or cuddle with me on the sofa to help me warm up. Aidan is some small help in the latter, but her tiny cat body doesn't do more than make one small warm spot in a sea of cold. And she's remarkably inept when it comes to making tea. (Must be the lack of opposable thumbs.)
It's when I'm sick that I feel most lonely; my weakness reminds me of my need for others.
I woke up this morning with a stuffed-up nose and an earache. Two hours later, I still feel like I'm walking in a fog, unable to concentrate on anything for more than a few seconds before my mind drifts back into a half-sleep state. Ugh.
hypocrite in a pouffy white dress by Susan Jane Gilman
Mildly amusing (and occasionally quite funny), but it certainly doesn't live up to the "If you don't absolutely love this book, you are simply dead inside" quote on the back. Good airplane reading, I'd say.
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
There were a few delightful turns of phrase, but in the end, it was no Peace Like a River. Towards the beginning I was struck by a description of the meaning of baptism and thought "yes! yes!" But then I realized that I was reading out of a sense of obligation and a need to finish the book. Oh well.