Today as I was walking towards the beach with my chair and cooler in about the same way I walk around the halls of the middle school where I am principal–focused, earnest, attentive, fast–I paused as I am more likely to do these days and evaluate my situation. “Why the heck are your walking towards the beach–the beachor goodness sakes!– like it was your job? You’re on a much needed vacation this Labor Day Weekend!”
So I did what I will call my “body check”: toes curled and tense: check; arms tight and taut: check; neck and rest of general body tense: check. So I stopped, laughed gently about my typical “go hard or go home!” neurotic mentality, tried to release and relax said body parts, and walk more slowly. It’s new thing for me I like to call “growth.”
This had really hit home with me on a roller coaster with my 8th graders last spring (see post below) where I realized if I relaxed into the curves and mind-blowing drops, my body experienced the joy of the ride and I felt much less worse after it (though still dizzy).
So much of my life and your life are like the drops and curves on that coaster. I think that, by proxy, I just approach life expecting that at any given moment, like a coaster, life will jut hard to left, drop 200 feet, then up to the right, leaving me breathless and disoriented and my neck hurting. I stay fixed in a mode of readiness so that I will not be surprised by the quick turns, because you have to be ready. So I walk the halls of my middle school and to the beach with the same intent and purpose without any idea I am doing so. It’s an old thing for me I like to call “crazy.”
For about 15 years I have been a fan of Thomas Merton, the Catholic monk and Christian mystic who prolifically wrote about our inner life with Christ. Merton, Henri Nouwen, Young Life solitude retreats, the Episcopal liturgy and my own personal experiences since the age of 6 all led me to the realization about fifteen years ago that I am a Christian Mystic. I should probably explain that more in a future post, for now I hope it will suffice to say that I have always experienced God in my body and in nature and music, in everything really, seeing things as signposts of his love. Everything.
One night in 5th grade, when I was listening to my digital clock radio late at night in bed, I was feeling very lonely. Then Donna Summer’s song “I love to Love You, Baby” came on, and I knew, just knew, that God was singing to me! I was loved! He loved loving me! And I felt such joy and peace. It was only later that I realized this was quite a sexual song and I laughed my head off about it. That God guy will do anything for a laugh and to let you know He crazy about you. Such a show off!
But back to my mystical side and Merton. I learned in my Episcopal church in Concord the liturgy of church and the ebbs and flows of praying the day–dawn, day, dusk, dark, as Merton calls them. I love the focus it gives to each day and the attentiveness to God it brings. In my job I can’t really stop at noon and pray the prayers and kneel and such–most of us can’t. Put 700 middle schoolers in your vicinity and that its it’s not appropriate in a public school setting (which I wholeheartedly agree with), and you don’t do it. But the interior life can always be praying, always experiencing the Divine, though I find you have to create reminders as such in the busyness of it all.
Enter my iPhone. I wake up to my iPhone’s alarm each morning. I use the alarm settings when I need a timer for cooking or napping. So it occurred to me on a solitude retreat this summer, as I was thinking about how not to lose perspective in the hustle of life, that I needed alarms to remind me of what is really true. There are two breath prayers that every single time I read them in my Merton praying the hours book, that seize my soul and trip me up in a good way. The first? “Take more time, cover less ground.” Now, everyday at 10:30 am, the harp ring tone will sound, and in order to turn it off, I have to face the alarm’s “name, ” which is said breath prayer: “take…more…time…cover…less…ground….”.
I am not sure exactly what it does for me, but I can tell you this; I am immediately refocused and centered. I am thrust back to what is important. I feel more sane. It’s a blessed sort of thing I like to call “healthy.”
It should be no surprise, then, when as I did the mental body check of tenseness and curled toes, that this breath prayer shot through my mind and reaffirmed the need to literally take more time walking, and in doing so, covering less of the trek to the beach, all the while knowing I would get there, just a bit slower and a lot more relaxed.
A Different Way of Being 