The Courage of Doing Nothing

A few days ago, one of my friends from college posted the following "Poem for Busy People" on their facebook page:

Cramped

I need margins in my life. But I am
Crammed right up against my limits of
timefocusemotionstrength

Therefore it doesn’t take much for me to spill
over into the spaces,
Filling them until I have nowhere left to go.

I need margins. But everything in me wants to do
all I can. Be all I can be. Save the world
from sin and destruction.

Then I have so little time for rest and love.
So little time for quality so great is my quantity.
Rest and Love are segmented parts of my week,
teetering on the edge of my schedule
Where the slightest breath can knock them off,
treated like chaff when they are really marrow.

If I have a Palm Pilot that can keep track of all appointments;
if I have the ability to add more people to my schedule;
if I know all about grace and rest and love
but have not love and rest,
I am a tired disciple, a dim light, a busy Martha.

All that I have been taught tells me to do more.
Tells me that I can be God. That God needs me
in 100 places at once. That I can be Superman if I
beat my arms furiously enough against the air.

In order to make room for margins,
what will have to fall?
If I don’t make room for margins,
I will be falling.

—Marshall Benbow

In such a fast-paced, utilitarian driven society, it's hard for most of us to not feel guilty in taking the time to rest, to make room for the margins so that we can fully nourish our minds, hearts and souls.  Sometimes I find myself making excuses for why I don't have enough time to go to mass, go to yoga, or even make healthy meals at home.  But for me, the undeniable truth is that sometimes the silence and the rest scares me.  This fall, I have had a change of pace in terms of my schedule, which is more socially balanced than last year, but much more of a commitment than I have hours in the day.  Thus, quiet and rest often fall to the wayside, taking with them prayer and contemplation.  I have never been too "good" at prayer to begin with, mainly because my mind is always flooded with thoughts of anxiety and competing voices.  However, it has become very clear to me that I've been keeping so busy not only because I like to feel useful, but also because I'm frankly scared of what would happen if I really self-reflected.

I am definitely not afraid of my own deepest fears or inner doubts- in fact, I would rather confront them head on and try to become more mentally healthy than live in denial of them.  But there is something within me that just doesn't want to "deal" with what is really going on in these changing seasons of life.  It's easier for me to just plunge into my work (be it pastoral or academic) than to go, take my journal, and go sit by the lake.  Because I know that I have a lot of things that I haven't really taken the time to process, but am scared of what that entails.  Sometimes we have things churning inside of us that come up so unexpectedly.  Maybe it's God continuing to knock on the door of my heart until I finally have the courage to open the door, and confront the fact that I don't even know if he/she is really there for me anymore.  I need to have the courage to do nothing, in order to find out. To do otherwise would be for me to be closing the margins of my life, to the point where I just spill over and fall.

In yoga, there is this heart-opening pose called "dolphin" pose, and you literally prop your body on yoga blocks in such a way that your heart is wide open and above the rest of your body.  During that pose, while an acoustic version of "Bring me a higher love" was playing, I cried.  I couldn't stop, and I was so embarassed!!  I wouldn't have known that I had that inside of me until I actually stopped, did nothing, and opened up my heart.  Maybe I need to try that again sometime...

Namaste, and other ways that yoga has changed me

About 2 months ago, I decided to go to the drop-in free yoga class that my neighborhood yoga studio has on the first Saturday of each month. That day, I knew that I had fallen off the wagon in terms of running, and that the semester had started out with a roar, draining me in a lot of ways that I didn't know how to deal with. By the time I reached the middle of the class, I knew that going to yoga weekly was the thing that I needed in order to calm myself down throughout the semester- I thought to myself, "I want to learn more about this type of spirituality." While I don't claim to know a lot about Eastern spirituality, or even about different types of yoga philosophies, I wanted to jot down a list of really important things that I have learned through yoga, and by practicing it 2 or 3 times a week:

- don't compare yourself. This probably comes as a given (as are most important, basic lessons in life), but whenever I'm in a group class, I always find myself comparing myself to other people or trying to get the moves *better* than someone else. In yoga, on of the teachers always starts off by saying that yoga is not a practice about ego, but rather about listening to how your body is that day and not worrying about whether you are doing it right or if everyone is getting the "tree pose" except for you.

-right now, you are perfect. When I was taking a class in Minnesota with my childhood friend Liz, the instructor told us to believe, for the next hour, that we are perfect. As soon as she said this, I got all "theology" on that statement and kept thinking about how we are all fallen, how we are far from perfect, how I'm far from perfect, etc. Then, as I was thinking about how much I disagreed with this statement, she said "don't try to analyze this thought, or question it." In that moment, I really was perfect, simply because I wasn't nit-picking things that were wrong with me, I was just loving myself.

-leave everything behind when you get on the mat. This hour is all about you, and you get to leave the world behind for a little bit and stop the freakin' broken record in your head of doubts, to-do lists, relationship drama, work drama, etc. and just concentrate on you. Although in principle it is not hard for me to indulge in myself, it is very hard to stop my worries, my anxieties and my thoughts about the day. My mat is the place where my mind stops analyzing...even if just for a moment.

-your breath is the most important thing, it is the center of life. For someone who finds myself not breathing deeply enough when I get anxious (most people don't know how to breathe through their diaphragms, and when we get nervous our breath naturally gets really short and "heady"), being reminded in yoga to breathe intentionally is the best thing for my daily life. I really loved it when my instructor said that when we find ourselves thinking about other things or worrying, to breathe so loud that it drowns out that little voice. At first I thought it sounded really funny when the people next to me where breathing so loud that it whistled, but it really does feel good. Good air in, bad air out.

-As you exhale, let go of anything that you need to let go of. Let go of anything that is weighing you down. This is perhaps the greatest lesson (again, really simple duh I know this stuff but don't live it) that I have learned from my yoga classes. Anything that isn't lifting me higher, that is literally bringing me down in my life, needs to be released with every exhale. I have believed for a very, very long time that to love someone means to love them even when they treat you badly, and that Jesus loved us even we we turn our backs on him so why shouldn't we do the same. The problem with this type of belief is that I have never been able to let go of things (mainly people) who, for the most part, just make me worry, make me feel bad about myself, and make me unhappy. I justify it by saying that love isn't about always expecting reciprocal feelings in return, it is not a give and take economic exchange that is always equal...it's just love, no matter what. But there is a problem in always loving people who just give back negativity in return, or make you feel weighed down, even if unintentionally. I need to let go. It's not because I haven't loved enough or in the way that they want me to, it's just because they are weighing me down, and I am better than that. I need to learn to love myself.

Namaste. The divine light in me recognizes the divine light in you. Or, as my friend Maggie translates it, "have a good day." ;-)