Meandering Is the Way

Photo by Thomas Ondrey

The weird trajectory of a Covid illness has forced me to contemplate that progress is not linear. You may feel like you're getting better – and then you're not.

In our lives, we may feel like we've successfully dealt with a habit, a loss, a troubling memory – and then we haven't. It rolls back around, covered with a surprising new layer of muck for us to uncover and sit with.

During these days in Northeast Ohio when seeing the sun seems like a moment of jubilation, it feels prudent and nurturing to give in to the season. In her beautiful book,  Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, Katherine May says:

"…we are in the habit of imaging our lives to be linear, a long march from birth to death in which we mass our powers, only to surrender them again, all the while slowly losing our youthful beauty. This is a brutal untruth. Life meanders like a path through the woods. We have seasons when we flourish and season when the leaves fall from us, revealing our butt bones. Given time, they grow again."

We have no recognition of this is our culture, this fallow time, and it is so crucial for our wellbeing. As a teacher of restorative yoga practices, I learn this lesson over and over again while my busy thinking mind has other plans.

This change of a way of being from linear to meandering can only happen in the day-to-day moments of our lives. As Richard Rohr says:

"We do not think ourselves into new ways of living;
we live ourselves into new ways of thinking."

And we live ourselves into new ways of thinking through the miracle that is our being: our body, our sensations, our breath. The waft of the cold the comes across our face when we venture out into the winter landscape; the softness of the quilt that covers us at night; the lushness of a warm soak in the tub.

I am trying to notice and be with these everyday moments (even blowing my nose) that are real and true as well as making room for the awe of the amazing in our world. Consider the five-year reconstruction of Notre Dame in Paris, a smoldering building in 2019 that through many miracles has been restored and reopened to the public this past December.

In the December 29th New York Times article “Making the Heart of Paris Beat Anew” by Michael Kimmelman, the author describes how this 12th century landmark drew together a community of repairers, reinvigorating artisan organizations:

"Those artisans and conservators I met spoke so movingly about working in concert on something larger and longer lasting than themselves," the author explains. "I can’t recall ever visiting a building site that seemed calmer…or one filled with quite the same quiet air of joy and certitude. When I quizzed one worker about what the job meant to her, she struggled to find words, then started to weep."

We are, each of us, not only meandering through our own sometimes wintering, sometimes summering, but also through our collective journey towards conscious awareness. Despite (and perhaps because of) the difficulties of our times, we are being nudged towards an expanded awareness via the vehicle of our day-to-day presence. Yoga helps us do this by focusing on grounding our bodies in the here and now and offering an almost endless array of tools to assist us into the present moment.

Wishing each of you more meandering through your days with great awareness.

Peace,
Anne