A New Center

Until this past October, I always wanted my stomach to be smaller. My physical self-awareness has been characterized by the balance between Skinny and Fat, Acceptable or Not, Small or Big.

As a first-grader, lining up next to other girls, I took note of the way their bodies and my body fit into our uniform skirts. Some girls seemed barely able to keep their skirts up, they were so lithe and slender; others, whose shirts bagged a bit around the waistband, seemed to need some extra room. My belly wasn’t the biggest, nor was it the smallest, but I noticed that, depending on how I stood or sat or sucked in, I could fall on either side of the divide.

Looking back, I see a happy, healthy little girl whose eyes were so bright, no one was looking at her belly.

In junior high, I used to do two hundred crunches before bed each night, hoping to trim my tummy for that future occasion when I might bare some skin in front of my peers. The glances of guys and the acceptance of other young women – who, I presumed, would only want someone attractive near them – motivated my efforts.

Looking back, I see a twelve-year-old in the throes of early puberty, blossoming into a curvy woman. She is so tender and beautiful, she defies the dimensions of any midriff.

College brought new confidence in everything I was – that is, everything outside the solar plexus. I still did not ultimately trust myself; I could only trust others’ judgments of me. My core remained weak, and I only held criticism of its softness. I learned true vulnerability in the arms of my future husband. He felt the full circumference of my spirit and ever encouraged me to expand.

Months ago, something happened inside of me that brought fundamental change to my life. In darkness and mystery, in the very center of my being, a new life was born. He is still small enough to hold in my hands; I will have to wait until June or July to finally look into his eyes. The center of my world has shifted to rest on this child, my child, a person I have never even met but with whom I am already desperately in love. This recalibration of my consciousness colors everything differently.

My body has begun to follow ancient maps, written in a language I will never know, that direct the growth of my body as it makes way for this new life. The transformation has brought challenge, but has overwhelmingly beckoned my enchantment. The beauty of this evolution has redistributed the weight of importance in every part of me.

Namely, my stomach. I once longed for it to be small and flat. Now, I want the whole world to notice its protrusion! Once upon a time, I reflexively sucked in air when a friend reached for a hug; now, I stick out my middle in hope that someone will touch it and exclaim with excitement. I once worried about the ways my diet would improve or worsen my appearance; now, my concern is to increase the number of centimeters I measure so that my baby is healthy. For the first time, I am happy to take up space in this world because it is for such an evidently precious purpose.

What a shame that I have not always recognized that I take up space for a precious purpose: to walk the planet as a beautifully embodied, abundant gift that anyone should be grateful to receive.

Already, I have let old patterns slip into my passing thoughts. Will my uterus shrink quickly enough so I can fit properly in a bridesmaid gown? Will applying lotion daily be enough to prevent stretch marks? I am not yet perfect in my perception of myself. But I am trying to teach new habits through the marvel of this miraculous time. I proudly post pictures of my baby bump. I gently hold my stomach as I speak tenderly to my baby, to myself. I focus my questions on how I’m feeling, not how I think I’m looking, and determine my well-being according to this standard of health. I look at pictures of women who, standing courageously naked in the face of Judgment, bare their stretch marks and sagging breasts, their bony shoulders and knobby knees, their soft stomachs and big booties, their slender torsos and love handles, their straight lines and their curves, their breadth and their depth…and I take note that I am awed by their beauty. I rarely look long at what they may deem to be flaws. Instead, I am captivated by their radiant smiles, shining eyes, and the wonder of their whole being, rounded and full, taking up just the right amount of space. I can even begin to gaze at myself with such effortless grace.

And when my baby comes into the world, crying and longing for his mother, he will not notice that my belly is too big. He will nestle into the wonder of flesh against flesh, basking in the warmth of coming earth-side. He will find my receptive arms a perfect cradle, my breasts an ideal resting place, my belly the center of all comfort and care he has ever known. The balance between Acceptable and Not will be perfectly achieved in my relinquishment of striving for it. When my stomach eventually recedes to a newfound waistline, I wish for my ontological focus to expand indefinitely. The radical acceptance of Who I Am, for the sake of my child, myself, and the world, will be the self-awareness that centers me most fully. 

Lessons: To Be Human

I put to words some of my innermost fears. Then, I re-wrote the fears as hopeful invitations (below). I want to transmute the energy of my thoughts for my, and the world's, betterment.


Release the rigid thought that you are too small a part of the universe.

Open to the expansive, unfathomable realms of worlds you are.

Become someone who chooses your manifestation at each unfolding level.

Honor the common yearning for connection: to move at the pace of being human with other people.

Forgive yourself for thinking you fall short of your narrow, self-defined human standard.

Relinquish saying this: “I am not doing it right.”

Free yourself of the assumption that you have failed or will fail to be good.

False humility projects an environment that stretches only to the expanse you think you can be.

Live into harsh, frank, disappointing weakness.

By your inconsistency and inauthenticity, build a bridge to all other people.

Feel empowered to bare your vulnerability in small and big ways.

Welcome yourself into the possibility of belonging. 

A Pilgrimage

Thoughts from a contemplative pilgrimage through Louisville, KY, to see the ordinary more fully as it truly is.

FOUNDERS SQUARE      

The chiming Cathedral bells sound ominous in the cold morning air. I stand in the center of Founder’s Square, watch the waking city, and imagine a time not so long ago in this place when trees were the tallest forms and the noise of birds beginning their day deafened the ear. I imagine native people, the ones who called this land home for thousands of years, gathering to bury their dead. The river must have sounded so close, like the roar of a world just-beyond. Perhaps the forest thinned in this spot, offered a patch of light and a panoramic view of darkness. On a misty morning like this, as they whispered their prayers, turned the earth, and lowered still bodies, could they have guessed that Europeans would come to flatten their burial grounds in a mere few hundred years?

The ideals we suppose upon which we are founded – hope in a New World and, presumably, a better one – were never manifest. This square is a lie; the world was not made new, or better, by covering sacred spaces with asphalt and steel. One cannot build progress on the bones of the dead, nor fashion an image after something that never was. The ghosts of another time are more real than the mirage of this metropolis.

I envision dark eyes, long, silky hair, silent breath lingering here. I see faces, past and future, turned toward this moment with dependent curiosity. The choice to place myself here as a witness holds the promise of reconciling the gap between where we have been, or what we have done, and where we are going, or what we are creating. My aching heart, wracked with sorrow at suffering long past, offers me the chance of healing. Although I cannot resurrect old bones, perhaps I can hold them in the light, one hand clutching the talismans, the other reaching out to the rushing potential that courses through this moment, this air, my veins, this holy ground.

CATHEDRAL OF THE ASSUMPTION

The gold stars that adorn the ceiling of this sanctuary, though beautiful to behold, are flat representations of reality. The walls are painted to look like blocks of limestone and marble, but are, in fact, artificial simulations. The structure is one of glittering opulence, but little substance.

The Church: a grand façade, a spectacular temple of jewels, metals, and stone that craft an empty chasm; a cold, lifeless void in which human flesh is made to seem unsacred.

When I was seventeen, the priest who once offered me my First Communion held aloft to his congregation a new, solid gold chalice and paten. Each parishioner stood in thunderous applause at the just and proper display of devotion. This extravagant piety violated the truth I understood the Eucharist to be. I felt my little remaining faith in the Church crumble like clutched hosts.

Eucharistos: “gratitude.” Communio: “mutual participation.”

The pull of hungry bellies and empty pockets, of forgotten people and neglected neighborhoods tugged my gut as the cup and plate gleamed. Imagine how many starving children that cost could feed. Was this what Jesus meant to tell us when he said, “Take and eat; this is my body” – to show gratitude by squandering the poor’s money on precious platters? Did he mean us to fixate on his lifeless body, or the Living Body?

As I approach her statue, I gaze upon the pristine face of the Virgin, her eyes cast skyward, her foot gently resting on serpentine evil. Although such depiction makes her seem otherworldly, the truth is that she was as fully human as I am. As a young woman, she felt a child press upon her inmost being. She wailed, pushed, screamed, and sweated, and her flesh ripped as she birthed her son. She nursed him, disciplined him, held him, worried for him, took pride in him, watched him, grieved him, and loved him in all his humanness.

Jesus learned a thing or two from his mother: he touched the blind man, kissed the leper, held the children, ate with tax collectors, walked with fishermen, hanged with criminals, suffered for those he loved.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners. Teach us toward holy embodiment.

BALONEY ALLEY

The soft, tiny feather I found swept into this musty corner behind the west façade of Fourth Street Live! is breaking my heart with its fragility. Everything is precious, worth touching carefully like the miracle it is. The dust of this nook coats the alley, the pavement, the sign that reads “SERVING LUNCH DAILY 12:15PM-1:00PM.”

I want to paint the wall between Fourth Street Live! and the back of the Cathedral. I want to craft a mural for the folks who line up daily for a lunch at this little soup kitchen. I want to study their faces, mix my palette, and paint a radiant scene to capture the wonder of each one. I want those humble people to behold the blossoming masterpiece and their reflection in it. I want the earthy glory of every person in the queue to come pouring out onto that divisive canvas as a reminder of the humanity we can see, but keep hidden for convenience.

Someday, I want the wall to be demolished to rubble. I want people to destroy it because they have realized it shields them from their friends and neighbors on the other side. I want the Cathedral Lunchroom to close for lack of business. I want Hard Rock Café to practice its slogan, “Love All, Serve All.” I want Fourth Street Live! to represent truly the life that thrives and struggles in its sacred intersection. I want no one to slip through the cracks.

Even in this dead-end alley lies possibility, soft and waiting to be found – a feather of hope.

AFTER MERTON CORNER in the CATHEDRAL PRAYER GARDEN

This tree is beautiful, its layers of papery bark peeling back in rhythm with the seasons. I sit in its dappled shade and watch a man who is sleeping on a bench in the sunshine. Cars irreverently whiz by; the drivers are irritated by their delays, feel victimized by the beat of traffic lights and congestion. They do not see the man tucked beneath his scrubby cover. In their haste, they do not see the way the light casts his features into a dazzling vision of grit and beauty. They do not see the circle of pilgrims who have been bearing witness to their city all day.

They do not see the young woman looking at a man from under a tree, or him looking back. They do not see the small smile he slips me. They do not see the fact that he is, under the veil of dark skin, shining like the sun.

This, and this, always this is a moment of pilgrimage, of epiphany. 

Heartspeed

This is a love poem to the way I know how to love what I know.

I love
   your sleeping body, your arms draped across your chest in self-embrace,
          the rise and fall of your breath from lungs and throat and mouth
               that once expelled air to form the words, "Marry me?"
   your eyelids drawn down like the bedsheets you once bought for my birthday,
          on which we made love and I, gazing in your eyes,
               felt for the first time that kind of release where the self is lost.
   your beautiful mind, your keen sight, your soft heart,
          the safety in the circle of your shoulders and hands,
               that ring of light, the portal of letting-go.

Sunlight
   warmed the skin between my knees and thighs this morning;
   particles, eight minutes ago, expelled from the sun,
   hurled toward earth in careless release from elemental forgery and,
   after mere clock-ticks in dark space, touched the pale places of lovers reclining
   as emanations of this solar-wind life-breath -
   intertwined love as bodies seeking to draw together.

The heart only knows
   to see in light speed
   through the space between
   the lover and beloved.

The Guide to Salvation: A Vision in Which Humble People are the Gate-Keepers to the Reign of Goodness in the Cosmos

Seeking the margins of societal bounds pushes us to the limits of definition and understanding of humanity.

The people seen out of the corner of our eye, caught in glimpses of stark reality, coated in sacred dust, groaning in the pain we inflict by our averted gaze, in fact stand at the center of that which we have long ago lost sight. They stand in the center of their humanity, their deep and intrinsic connection to earth, to space, to stars, to Life and Being. They hold this knowing in the simple acts of feeding their children, tilling the earth, lacking ambition.

We who sit on plastic yoga balls and pay our personal trainers to force-feed us vegan meal plans are the ones who claw tooth and nail toward the truth that gently enfolds the humble people we do not dare to see. We are starving for the abundance they hold, and sinfully, we gorge ourselves on the excess borne of their material deprivation.

Yet even in our folly, we cannot help but be immersed in the truth of Oneness. The difference is that their surrender has been their salvation – they have spread their arms wide and floated on the gently lapping waters of wonder in Something Greater. In the struggle of the First World – absent-mindedness, incessant business, and arrhythmic rationalizations – we have asphyxiated. We drown in our own womb-waters because we refuse to breathe in the direction of dependence. We insist we can feed only through our brain, not through our gut roped to the Mother Globe and our iron-infused heart tied to Parent Galaxy.

Gaunt and grim, we turn to look at those impoverished people who stand on the edge, and in horror at our own absurdity, finally see that they stand at the threshold of a horizon from which we have been running. Just beyond them, in the direction of their sight, is a new paradigm of Personhood, formed of fine energetic connections that lace a gentle path. This weft of light leads to Universal Integration, but first, to a realized vision of Justice for inhabitants of Earth.

How do we return to right relationship? How can we make the quantum leap necessary to traverse the chasm we have created between us and our brothers and sisters of every species who never let go of the truth?

The truth, it seems, never let go of us.

It whispers to us,

Simply remember the song your body hums to the rhythm of the cosmic hymn.

Resist the pull to the top that propels you away from true presence.

Break open your heart; empty out all you thought you had to be in order to reclaim who you always have been.

First, look. See as if you have never seen before, which you have not, as each moment is now, and now is the only time what you see has been, and now is when you are looking. In looking as if you have never seen before, notice the familiarity. Hold the grace of the mystery that, somehow, you have always known what you see.

Second, learn to speak like that. When judgment creeps into your language, let silence reorient you to the being in-itself, which is the object, the person, the place, the idea you behold. Learn all things and people as a reflection of you, and remember that you are wholly good. Listen – your story is told through the mouths of others.

Third, align your action with your speech. Feel the path you carve with every gesture and choice. Allow slowness to keep you in your body. Witness each deed as a creative effort toward a reality you decide.

Fourth, unclench your tight fist clinging to comfort. The soft pillows of wealth stifle your lungs and insulate you from a freshness your being craves. When you begin to feel cold and heat again, your chills and sweat will disturb you. Soon, though, the ease of knowing you are actually alive will create contentment in all seasons. You will feel that you are neither warm nor cold, but that you are given dimension by your experience of warmth and coolness. In a miraculous moment, you will grasp in a flash the beauty of that release.

Fifth, go where you will hurt. Pain precedes all growth and yields new dimensions. Penetrate the ever-emanating orb of suffering by carrying it with others. Keep moving through it, touching it, allowing its sting to singe your bones until, as a distant pinpoint, you see with your companions a spark of hope, which will grow to a joy that tenderly envelops the pain. The energy of joining-together is what heals all brokenness. Reassemble the pieces by adhering to fellowship.

Finally, arise. Realize you have always been in the right place, because, like all places, it is the center. Meet the eyes of your brothers and sisters whose struggles were caused by people who, like you, needed lessons to regain their humanness. Watch as they lock eyes with yours, smile, and extend a hand. Reach out and meet your own extended arm.

In the folded fabric of spacetime, you once saw a hierarchy and division…now, you feel the tug of strands all around. By this shape with no sides or angles, all form is perfectly represented.

There is nowhere to get to, no place at which to arrive. There is only here and now, and the perfect alignment of oneself with the wholeness of this.

Divinity shimmers in every facet. The face of God comes to light as Creation.

One touches the vibration of All That Is by taking the pulse of one's own heartbeat.

Peace becomes the only end.

tentative poems

I am comfortably a lover of poetry, not a poet. These brief lines come from a tentative place in me that longs to expand.


Morning Mountains

The mountains hold an emptiness, and the morning.
I look. I cannot capture it.
I surrender and
fall into it.
I was already
there.

-*-

Gift

Present moment brims -
wonder splays, blossoms adorn
laden tree branches,

unfold toward sunlight,
incense mystery I
gratefully receive.

-*-

Lexington Road, April 29th

man twirls ninja bow-staff in secret
dances under deep green canopy's quiet
on expansive seminary grounds

-*-

Tilt

What is it?
Filtered light through membrane
walls traced with thin veins.
Familiar...foreign.
Spinning   spinning   spinning
Large eyes mirror mine -
Butterfly wings -
Deep water -
spin-light
breath-spin,
tilt into space-time
I cannot yet penetrate
the edge of knowing.

-*-

Soft

Mess of lavender
Perfumes the clear morning light
That wakens my heart.

-*-

My Forgotten Child, Dzhokhar (As I Grieve the Boston Marathon Bombing)

Sun-soaking in breezes like sips of fresh water,

hot light warms my hair and casts a halo glow on my crown,

dazzles my shaded eyes searching for light

through the winking gaps of vines grasping

the sky, which grasps nothing, but holds

everything underneath its blanket of wonder,

shelters the sinners and saints and sovereigns all the same,

brightly beams at me, and you, and the young boy in Boston

who bombed the marathon runners, mothers and fathers

and babies all trying to make sense of a race to nowhere,

a sprint that loops us 'round to the same ruminations:

Why pain? Why struggle?

Why hate, harm? What need for hope?

Why blood and blasted limbs, why a bastard child

of humanity to turn us, again, against each other?

Because we fear to see that his scars

are ours, on our own bodies and souls -

ours, because we all have assaulted one another with lack of love.

The threat of walking into a crowd of strangers

is less than the death that comes of never being known.

The threat to humankind that comes of crucifying a Chechen

in the name of public safety and justice

is greater than the risk of calling him our son,

cradling him in care, gently stroking his hair in sunlight,

holding him with branch arms that bring his

brightness to blossom, allow us to glimpse

his glory under gory wounds, and offer him up

into the expansive sky-love

that will rain down refreshment of forgiveness,

will remind us that no one is simply a spectator,

that "Victim" names each and every forgotten child.

.