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.