One Step Further

If there is an end, then there is no God. Creation by God never ends, so creation of your movements never ceases. The moment you say, "I have got it," you have lost everything you had. As soon as something comes, you have to go one step further. BKS Iyengar

R said goodbye to her father yesterday in a church in S that stank of incense. I was feeling nauseous and the incense just made things worse. The priest was so old; are there any young priests anymore? Death, we were told, is not to be mourned but celebrated because the dead while gone from us rest now with God.

But death and funerals do make me sad, mourn, and grieve. I thought of my father, gone now almost two years, and missed him terribly especially his hands and his face which I will never see again. Driving successfully to S through the mangle of streets that is Cambridge and Boston, I was reminded of how my father taught me to drive, offensively, on those mean streets, to get around when the getting around isn't easy, to take things into my own hands, to go in the direction I have set my mind towards even though I have never been there before. Not enough fathers teach such things to daughters, the right to an assertiveness that isn't always pretty but gets things done.

I thought I had "gotten it" this thing of grief, of loss, of letting go. But in that smoke filled church was reminded that this is not so. There is no end to letting go, no getting the hang of it, of knowing how to make it easier and less painful. Perhaps the dead rest with God, but for the living, I think, that old priest missed something of beauty when he told us not to mourn. For the living, God exists precisely in the sorrow, the darkness, the places that are not known, not fully explored, that remain, waiting for us, one step further beyond the light.

Perfection

"The instinct that draw us toward the dream of perfection is really a desire for God." BKS Iyengar, Light on Life

Yoga practice asks us to care for that stiff back, the ache in the hip, the broken heart, with all the love and compassion we effortless give to a suffering child. 'Do not bother about failures in this endeavor," we are admonished by the sages. Try for just a little progress to perfection (to God, Enlightenment, non-judgment, compassion, humility) each day. That is all that we need do.

Ten minutes of Asana practice each day is better than one hour done in one day at the end of a week. For ten minutes a day, the mind is given a chance to stop giving directions, worrying about the future, fretting about what was lacking for breakfast. Most profoundly, the mind is given a chance to be a student of the body rather than the other way around. A devoted and attentive stretch to the hamstring, letting the brain be 'in' that hamstring, acts like a cooling balm for an overheated mind. The mind is given a chance to pause, absorb wisdom from the body, the heart, and the breath.

The desire for perfection can stop us in our tracks towards the mat with excuses like, "It is not worth it to get out of this cold bed, I don't do the poses right anyway," or "This will be too painful," or "I'll start tomorrow when I feel more energy." Should I give you a list of how many things I haven't done because I thought I was not good enough to do them, wasn't getting anywhere fast? That list would be long and boring. Better to know that I now get up early every morning for Asana practice over the roaring of the crowd that laughs and chides me for getting out a warm bed, for entering a tight hamstring, for longing for God and perfection amidst my imperfections.

Freedom Through Pain

In yoga, as in life, I am learning that pain cannot be avoided. Nor should it be.

In yoga, as in life, the way to grow is through pain. Where there is dullness, numbness, long held friction, movement will inevitably cause pain. This, afterall, is how new life, birth, is experienced. Sometimes sharp, others times throbbing, this discomfort that I initially retract from calls to me from parts of myself I did not know existed, "I am here!! Look how infinitly spacious, how deep, how penetrating."

Still, this is a treacherous journey from death through pain to life and, ultimately, freedom (if a spine that bends backwards is not the essence of freedom than I do not know what is.) I lack the courage for this journey. That is why I cherish my teachers who show me the way with patience, simplicity, and just enough sternness to bring me further. I depend on my sanga, the community of yoga students, whose striving is so beautiful, energizing, and supporting to me.

I am learning how to comfort my small self who wants no part in pain, who sees pain as defeat, incompetence, illness, incompleteness with my wiser self who sees how pain changes in the pauses, can be warm or cold, has soft contours that melt and release, who realizes that there is growth, fertility, and mystery in the pain.

As the stiffness in my hips and shoulders release, my muscles grow strong, my devotion to practice steadied, I gain release, devotion, steadiness in the rest of my life, off of the mat. Obstacles, pain, calamity, things not turning out how I planned, I see, are blessings like the aches in the neck and buttocks, showing me where there is dullness, fear, death waiting for a resurrecting breath.

The tastes of my family

"When I think of my mother, I taste desert." Adam Gopnik

When I think of my mother, I taste meatloaf, the kind she baked after a day of work at the bank, mixed with onions, tomato paste, bread crumbs, and cheddar cheese in the middle. When thinking of my father, I smell roasting chestnuts, taste their sweet earthiness on my tongue. For my grandmother, there are those ribbon shaped cookies made by her hands, fried but still soft inside, drenched in honey and powdered sugar. And that sauce, with the thick layer of olive oil sitting on the top that you pierced with fresh Italian bread to meet the tangy tomato underneath. For Nunzio, I taste the grapes that sat in a bowl on the kitchen table, sometimes plump, sometimes wilted, a bit of sweetness after a meal of weighty textures and flavors. For Louie, there are walnuts cracked fresh from their shell and wrapped in dried figs. "Try this," he said offering me the cracked nuts snug in their sticky friends.

Now there is E like a cinnamon sugar donut melting in my mouth and J fava beans soaked in salted water and simmered to oblivion with garlic, stewed tomatoes, rosemary, and oil.

Louie's Lupini Beans

My grandfather Louie like his lupini beans chewy not mushy, with salt and pepper, a little olive oil and lemon drizzled on top. His son, Mikey (my father), made sure to have lupini beans (salted, peppered, and oiled) when Louie came for Christmas Eve dinner. Before Mikey, it would have been Philly (my grandmother) who hosted Christmas Eve dinner. Still, it was probably Mikey who made sure that lupini beans arrived at the table prepared in the way that Louie liked.

Mikey bought lupini beans from a jar(Pastene). Each large yellow bean, soaked in a briny water, was encased in its own waxy sheath. The sheath was removed with the tongue releasing the creamy bean from within. When Amelia (Louie's wife) made Louie lupini, she bought the beans dried, soaked them in salted water for the afternoon, then boiled them on the coal fired stove until they were tender but firm.

After Amelia died, Louie ate lupini only when the neighbors or cousins brought them for Sunday dinner. While he learned to make his own tomato sauce, roasted meat, white bean and escarole soup, Louie didn't have the heart to make lupini.

"Pass the lupini," Louie would call down from the end of the dining room table where he sat next to Philly and Nunzio (my grandfather)_ at Christmas Eve dinner. He would place one bean at a time on his tongue, chewing and talking in Italian with Philly and Nunzio about "the old country," a pile of waxy sheaths growing by the side of his plate.

The Fabric of Your Skin

What is the fabric of your skin like today?

Perhaps, like mine, the skin of the elbow is rough like burlap, hungry for moisture and warmth. What about the skin of the throat, the under side of the heal, the palms? Where is it tight, itchy, smooth, glossy, folding over onto itself? Does the skin of the front body drape down like a heavy woolen cape or is it more like spandex, springy, taught, and rising up from the belly?

The skin perceives, embraces, feels what is inside and out. It gives the illusion of separateness and armor but in fact is permeable and as changeable as the atmosphere. The surface of the skin vibrates microscopically when touched, in the presence of beauty, by your baby's tears.

Too Old

Now that you are getting older, what are you too old to do?

Fiction writer Barb Johnson published her first book More of This World or Maybe Another when she was 52. (My hero!) Before entering the MFA program at the University of New Orleans at 50 she had worked as a carpenter for 20 years. Her closets filled with scraps of writing (like my own) called out for loving attention but for a long while she was hard of hearing. She writes, "And this is the thing: the almost universal fear that an endeavor will take too long, that we will be way past our primes, our social usefulness, before we get to whatever we long for. And lurking underneath is the larger fear of not being good enough."

What is it you have longed to do but fear it is too late, that you are "past your prime", won't be "good enough"? What obstacles do you place in the way of your soul's deepest desires?

I struggle with deafness to my soul's callings. "Its just too late; there is no time; better to make more money, clean the bathroom, feel badly than do what it is you long to do just for the sheer pleasure of it."

Where I finally find the grace to give my soul what it craves is a mystery; could be sheer misery that finally drives me to try something different, to stop banging that head against that wall.

And the soul is so kind. The more she is loved the more ease I find in my body, the more grace there is to follow her lead. Surprisingly, I do not find grace through effort but in letting go. Letting go is what the soul gently prods me to do, of ever single thing (beauty, strength, money, control, joy, sorrow, love, hate, the breath) things we really don't "have" in the first place even though the mind would tell you this is not so.

Surely, I will drown in this tumultuous river, be drawn under for good, if I don't cling to the raft, the splintered fragment of wood, this shard of a life raft. "Just let go a little," my soul sings to me. There are sharp rocks, falling waters, places that are deep, cold, unfamiliar. How can it be that the more I let go the easier it gets, the less work I need to do? The river moves me away from all that I know to surprising and mysterious places. I survive, thrive even.

I see, in small glimpses, why this is so. I am the river. There are no hands for gripping, no pieces of wood to grab, no being unchanged.

Thanks Barb for your lovely reminder of this!