Bring It

At a meditation retreat, which I attended in the Berkshires a couple years ago, my yoga instructor reminded us to “Bring it to the mat.” Bring what? I thought. My body? My water bottle? What else is there to bring?

Meditation, as far as I knew, didn’t require anything but oneself, and maybe a stop watch to reassure one when there is only five minutes left.

For some, meditation is a terrifying practice. It means attempting to sit still amidst the chaos of one’s life. It means resting (or wrestling) with oneself, which can bring feelings of estrangement if one is not comfortable in one’s own skin.

It can also be deafeningly loud to hear the beating of one’s own heart, especially if one hasn’t stopped to listen in a while, or ever.

For those who experience this sense of upheaval when seated silently, the phrase “Bring it to the mat” carries more meaning. Bring your confusion, your pain, your frustration, your questioning.

For me, meditation has been less frightening then tediously boring. I realize that is either because I am in denial of my own need for calming or my mind is full of such a raucous that I simply can not overcome it. Either way, meditation for me has been something to attempt and endure, rather than enjoy.

Here in lies my answer to that question “What am I to bring to the mat?” Simply put, the belief that I don’t need the mat is precisely what I bring to it.

My yoga instructor’s spouse co-led the retreat and put it in a more comical way. He described our natural tendency to rush from the mat, to give up on meditation, to walk away from the prayerful practice of just being.

He said, "Be patient with yourself, be kind. Imagine yourself as a puppy being potty trained. When you feel the urge to step off the mat and walk away, gently place yourself back on the ground like a puppy being guided back to the newspaper."

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the well known memoir Eat, Pray, Love gives another lovely analogy. When her thoughts take her hostage during a time of meditation, she says in a tender motherly tone, “Not now, Honey. Mommy’s talking to God.”

It’s so very difficult to put aside those nagging thoughts, especially when one is trying to commune with the sacred. But the wonderful dichotomy is that while we are attempting to prioritize the Holy over our chatterbox minds, it is in that very cacophony of active thinking that God works so proficiently.

So, instead of pretending that one’s mind is utterly placid and peaceful, we might as well accept that our mind is more often than not in a state of frenzy. The relief is the fact that such chaos is exactly what we are asked to “bring to the mat.”

This invitation to “bring it to the mat” is especially reassuring as I become more absorbed in my studies at Louisville Seminary. What started off as grown-up summer camp has now turned into a full-fledged culture shock. In fact, I’m feeling my first few weeks in Peru resurfacing in surprising ways. The most obvious connection being language immersion.

During my first six weeks in Peru, I felt consumed by a dense and foggy headache. My speech was reduced to simple phrases in Spanish and I entered a state of hyper-listening, which translated hand gestures, lip movements and facial expressions, not to mention new verbs, nouns and colloquial sayings.

Here in seminary, I am overwhelmed not by a new spoken language but the written text of ancient Hebrew and the thinking text of normative ethics. These elements of Biblical Hebrew and philosophy seem similar to me, in their capacity to have a heavy monotonous sound, like the distant vibration of a gong.

Yet while that sound more often is a call to prayer to meditation, this droning sound carries for me the burden of needing to understand – the need to grasp, the need to excel.

For a recovering perfectionist, such as I am, being in a class which requires mastering something new is… terrifying. I thought I had gotten over this! I thought I had reformed my need to be “good” at all costs!

But unfortunately, my perfectionist tendencies are creeping back. Those preoccupations with incessant “rightness” are knocking on my door, as if my time in Peru and at the City Mission had taught me nothing.

During the past few years in grassroots ministry, I learned that God doesn’t need me to be perfect. In fact, such disregard for my humanity harms God’s purposes for me and the community I am a part of.

So, if at that meditation retreat I didn’t think I had anything to bring to the mat, I do now.

I would bring the question, “How do I reconcile my tendency toward unrealistic standards for myself with God’s unique and specific standards for me?”

And while I still “bring it to the mat,” I find more and more the need to bring it to the pew.

Having been raised in the Presbyterian tradition, I’m accustomed to pew sitting as a pretty orderly activity. You dress nice, sit still and follow along with the rest of the congregation. For quite some time now, my family even sits in the same pew, left side second row.

Until recently, I have not viewed the pew as a place to bring anything other than a put-together self. But oh, how unrealistic that is.

Thanks to the pastors in my home church as well as the unconventional forms of worship I’ve experience in Peru and at the City Mission, I see the pew as a worthy place to bring just about anything.

Whether it is an old creaky wooden pew, a plastic chair, picnic table or stone slab, the pew is simply a place where I can come and bow my head. Sometimes I am surrounded by people I know and love, other times I find myself flanked by strangers or maybe even alone.

For me, the pew has become much less a place of expectation and standard keeping, but a new seat in which I can commune with and hear from God.

At Louisville Seminary, there are plenty of opportunities for pew sitting. Three days a week, the high-ceilinged wooden chapel is the sight of experimental worship services where students and faculty change-up the equation of traditional worship.

This past week I was invited to wave sheets of green lace and dance down the center aisle, in order to illustrate the reading from Psalms 150 “Praise the Lord with trumpet sound, praise him with the lute and harp! Praise him with timbrel and dance; praise Him with the strings and pipe.”

The theme of the service was “Make a Joyful Sound” from Pslam 98. And what really made the room alive were the toddlers of various seminary students banging drums, shaking maracas and clanging sticks together.

I think how lucky these children are to be able to be themselves in these pews, which for many has been a place where sound could not be made, restlessness was not accepted and alternative expressions of faith have been unwelcome.

As I walked into chapel on Friday, I was absolutely overwhelmed. My Hebrew class had left me in a state of inconsolable confusion. I was coming to terms with the reality that this is something I may not master, God forbid…

I felt even worse by the fact that I was losing my love of language – that joyful and exciting process of unraveling of mystery behind new words and sounds.

I slipped, more like slumped, into a pew near the back of those gathered. I needed to be calmed, I needed to breathe. Then, one of my classmates stood up in the front row and began reading about Woman Wisdom from Proverbs 8.

“Does not wisdom call, and does not understanding raise her voice? On the heights, beside the way, at the crossroads she takes her hand; beside the gates in front of the town, at the entrance of the portals she cries out, ‘To you, O people, I call, and my cry is to all that live.”

Then another student, Irene, stood to speak, although not in English. Knowing she is from Indonesia, I recognized the language as Bahasa. The words were round and bubbly and somehow friendly. Then from the very back pew, my friend Karol stood and read the same verse from Proverbs in French. "This I recognize!" I thought.

I got what was going on. I realized that I was hearing the call of Wisdom in different tongues. Each one was unique, beautifully spoken and revealing something deeper than just the words expressed. I closed my eyes and remembered why I love language, its diversity and song-like quality, different sounds, musical phrases and melodies.

Jessa stood and recited the Scripture in German, and I imagined my ancestors generations back reading those same words. And finally, a language from Africa was spoken and I imagined women gathering together at a water well, laughing and singing those same words.

Somewhere in the middle Blare rose from her seat in the opposite side of the chapel. As she began to speak, I recognized the guttural sounds and syllabification. She was reading from the Biblia Hebraica. She was speaking the very words that just moments before had pulled me into a stupor of frustration and anxiety.

She read each word with such ease and delight and because I was familiar with the verse, I could understand her. I could understand Hebrew! This new language, with its strange letters and right-to-left reading, was actually decipherable.

The language carried new meaning, no longer a cryptic ancient language, but one that added to the symphony of languages being uttered that morning.

In that simple reading, and re-reading of the Biblical text, I was transformed. Right there, in my pew.

I had come with an arrogant attitude, thinking, “If I can’t do this Hebrew thing well, it’s not worth doing.” And in bringing it to the pew, I was able to be changed. Had I not brought that load of self-importance and perfectionism with me, and honestly sat with it, I would not have had the opportunity to let it go.

Whatever it is that you have to bring and wherever you chose to bring it, just bring it. Bring it, sit with it and be willing, maybe even able to... let it go.

Unspoken

She didn’t come home last night. So unlike her. We knew something was dreadfully wrong.

Did she visit that man she still couldn’t rid herself of? In a grime-filled hotel room, or maybe the local prison. Or maybe, in her courageous effort to remove him from her life, he chose to retaliate. Taken. Hidden. Maybe even beaten.

That’s how she first arrived at the shelter. Hair done, a slick pleather jacket, shiny hoop earings and oversized celebrity sunglasses. Once inside my office, she removed the dark shades, revealing an even darker black puffy circle around her left eye. Punched in the face. Never to go back. And I believed her.

Five months later she is missing and it just doesn’t add up. She was on a new path -I could see it in her eyes, in the way she prayed, in the way she took younger, more frightened women under her wing. Her wings, which were just beginning to stretch to their widest potential. Job training program, local news interview, no longer hiding behind a curtain of braids.

So, no, I didn’t think she would be the one to not come back. To be out, somewhere else with no word.

But then again, there have been so many women who, the moment their light begins to truly shine, they unplug the lamp and cancel the electricity, preferring the cold, damp cellar they are used to. “It’s familiar, it’s easy, and no one will bother me down here.” And if one is afraid of tripping up the stairs, one may convince herself that it is safest to live at the bottom level.

Hours passed and my hope began to betray me, and I too wondered if she had sunk underground. Others literally thought she was left dead somewhere. We heard from a friend of hers and rushed to the starling reality, “Is she alive?” Her friend denied knowing anything. Such loyalty. Such need to protect.

“She’s safe,” the friend finally admitted, whispering under her breath to the one person who could spread the news the fastest. At least she’s safe. Yet, when would we see her, and in what condition?

The day slipped into early evening, the sun casting an end-of-the-week glow on the desk plants, client files and bags of donations. One more week of shelter provided for fifteen women and twelve children. The question was whether one bed would remain vacant, waiting for a lost woman to return for rest, surely safer then where she laid last night.

I began to close up my office for the night, prepared to pass the uncertain news unto the evening shift. The day’s residency notes stated that at least she was safe. But just as I forfeited responsibility to the next in line, she came home.

She raced straight to her room, saying she would be down in a minute. She needed to gather herself, compose her disordered heart and think of what to say. And we could only guess, waiting for her to explain herself.

Moments later, she came into the office. I closed the door and invited her to sit on the most comfortable chair we could find. Another staff member knelt to the floor by her knees. I began in an adjacent chair but eventually lowered myself to the ground. It was time to hear her story.

“Start from the beginning,” we offered, her heaving tears rendering her speechless. She couldn’t. This large proud woman in her mid-thirties, who so often expressed such wisdom, such truth, could now only throw her head to the side in anguish.

“Were you hurt?” No, she declared, it was nothing like that. At least our worst fears were put to rest. But what then could bring this woman of strength and perseverance to a state of utter despair?

Her face was saturated with tears, the pitch of her voice unrecognizably strained and desperate. She heaved and turned, trying to avoid our questioning faces. She closed her eyes and another avalanche of tears was dispelled beneath her eyelids.

As I looked longingly into her drenched eyes, I noticed a small beauty mark below her left eye. I never noticed it before. It must’ve been covered by her woundedness that first time she entered the shelter doors. Yet what about the next five months? How could I not have noticed that feature.

Just like I had never observed her hands before, the length and texture of her fingers, covered in tough skin yet ending in delicate unpainted fingernails. I placed my own hands on her left knee, noticing for the first time the radius of her knee cap, wide enough to envelope my palm.

As she sat there searching for language, I noticed the spaces between her teeth, the roundness of her surrounding cheek bones. The characteristics that made her face so familiar to me these past several months, but which now were distorted with unintelligible pain.

When words finally found their source, she began to speak. “I’m so sorry. I never meant to worry you… I just couldn’t…” She said she was wandering the streets during the day, cars rushing by, leaving gusts of exhaust in their wake. And buses. Barreling vehicles, which, she admitted, she considered walking in front of. To end all this.

But she just as quickly knew her life was still worth living - even though in her mind she was less than complete, tainted, a woman in shame. “No,” we pleaded. “You are beautiful, and whole and loved.”

Yet how do you convince someone of her sheer G-d-given completeness when the past twenty-four hours included hearing the words, “You are HIV-positive.”

As her tears dried and her story ended, she sat exhausted and worn, and together we mourned.