Another translation of namaste

"I see some good in you, you broken piece of turd!"
--my very wise yoga teacher's gloss on the familiar greeting.

Who was that man?

The other day a man stopped in to the church office while I was eating my lunch.

"You look like you're enjoying that sandwich."

"I am."

"You are lucky to have it."

"Yes, I am grateful for it."

He asked to use the phone and I said yes. I am oftentimes wary of people who come in asking for such favors. Sometimes, they can overstay their welcomes, or make me feel uncomfortable. But this man gave off a very calm, friendly feeling. He was a middle-aged African-American, wearing a knit cap over grayish white dreadlocks. He said he needed to use the phone, to help a friend of his get a phone installed, which seemed like an effort in keeping with our ministry. As he called the phone company, I could not help overhearing as he spoke in reasonable tones, gathering information for his friend, an older woman in Amherst. I realized that part of the reason I trusted him was because he spoke with an educated accent.

He told me afterwards that he was passing through. He always visited this lady on his way from Nantucket, where he lived, to Montpelier, where he had been invited to design a solar powered library. "How interesting," I said, and then he told me that the last time he was in our church, he had been visiting James Baldwin, who had been a visiting professor at the University at Pixieville. Having once been a denizen of the halls of the Englishland, I vaguely remembered having seen some posters dating to that era and knew he had spent some time here. He went on about how some other famous person found him and Baldwin talking and he said "oh, of course you know each other." I knew this to be shameless name dropping, but interesting nevertheless. I'm a sucker for famous writer stories. The man went on his way, and I expected not to see him again.

A day or two later, out of the corner of my eye, while driving through the grocery parking lot, I saw a homeless man moving large boxes towards some undeveloped land. I couldn't really see who it was, since I was in motion.

But then, the next day, I saw him again. Hard to miss him: he was wearing bright yellow pants, and that knit cap. It was the same man. How strange. Is he just a crazy homeless person? Is this how he travels from Nantucket to Montpelier? Is he really a solar architect? Whose reality is this?

Paradox

While driving through the orange tunnel that is tree-lined Dulcet Street at this time of year (actually, the autumn colors seem preternaturally prolonged this year: warmth and color so late into the season must be going to my head) I had a thought. The paradox of being alive in this world is that we are simultaneously healing and dying. Because we are always dying, at least once we've stopped growing up. We are not necessarily always healing, but we can be, if we seek to be. So healing is not opposed to dying. Hmmm.

This must be what happens when you make it to Centering Prayer group the previous day.

Be the Seaweed

My yoga teacher likes to use the image of kelp, floating in the waves, to describe how she wants us to flow through the sun salutation vinyasa, carried on our breath, moving into and letting go of each posture. I have gone snorkeling a couple times (never scuba diving, I don’t like any activity that involves dependence on devices for sustenance of life—yeah, ask me sometime to describe my one experience rock-climbing—and no, I do not like planes) and I have seen the motion of the oceanic plant life. Actually, the time near Puerta Vallarta, the waves were pretty strong, and the sight of all that vegetable motion rather frightened me: it was like an eerie hurricane. But I do invoke those visual images when my teacher instructs us to be like kelp. So perhaps that is why she asked me, last class, if I would mind the rest of the class looking at me as I went through a sun salutation. Apparently, I was doing a good job of being kelp. (Amazing the things the ego can take pride in: gold star kelp girl!). I was able to stay focused on being kelp while they watched me and the reason I bring this up is not to boast, but because I think my bodily connection to flow connected with a recent spiritual release. My prayer life has not been terribly active since I’ve been teaching two courses on weekends, in addition to my “day” job, but they just ended, and now I only have one online course to teach so time has just opened up for me and I’ve been able to try to return to my prayer life. And there was another thing. An email not sent. Strange liberating thing, that was. Someone had sent a church related email that irritated me, and I wrote a rather lengthy response to it, but sent it first to my co-worker to ask if she thought it was okay. She never got back to me, and I had gotten my annoyance out of my system, and the whole thing seemed pointless and petty and it was so easy to say presto its gone poof. No anger, no assertion, no self. Instead, I prayed blessings upon Mr. Functional Alcoholic, go-getter head of the social hobnobbing committee. And that, in turn, blessed me. And so, you see, it was easy to be seaweed!

And then, as I was walking to work after yoga, I saw a car parked, with a Be the Rain bumper sticker on it. I had seen those in the past, but not recently. The best I could get to with google is that it refers to a Neil Young lyric, which is about saving the planet. If you know more about this motto, please tell me.