This is not me… yet

It’s a few minutes before 6:00 PM on Monday night. The room is a steamy 96 degrees. Yoga mats are spaced evenly, with the essential sweat towel and water bottle at arms-length. I’m in my element, but for some reason I feel out of sync. I think about an intention for the class, and my mind goes blank… I’ve got nothing. I decide to make this practice all about peace, but I’m conning myself because peace has taken a hiatus. To my left, is a young lady warming up with an impressive inversion, which allows me to feign annoyance while hoping that one day I can replicate the pose in the form of a Facebook selfie taken in some exotic locale.

The music brings us to attention and the tranquil voice of the instructor welcomes us. We are invited to begin in child’s pose. This I can do… knees mat width apart, big toes touching, settling into my space – surely this is where my mind-body mojo will kick in. Without an inkling of warning the toes of my right foot spread wide and seize up in a horrific cramp. Though rational thought has left me, I realize that screaming out guttural obscenities would not be good yoga etiquette. The soft music plays on, the lone voice implores us to bring our questions to our mat and wait patiently for the answers…I however, am waiting patiently for my contorted toes to stop screaming at me. Pain is quickly leading into frustration as the teacher reminds us that this practice is all about what we need – that if our body is telling us to simply lay in savasana for the next hour, that’s perfectly fine. My fight or flight instincts tell me that this is yoga-speak BS, and I just need to power through this. They say that yoga is a judgement free zone but I’m in a full on self-condemnation spiral.  It’s now 6:05 PM.

It’s 1969 and I’m six years old. My mom and dad are devout Christians who have raised their kids to love Jesus. I’m standing where the hallway of my childhood home intersects with my bedroom door when I have an encounter with the divine. God whispers five words of encouragement directly into my spirit. Though the words are sealed and deeply personal, I come back to them often in moments of confusion and doubt.

It’s 6:55 PM on Monday night and the yoga class is winding down to the final savasana. I did what I set out to do. With little emotion or connection, I have endured. My soaked shirt and slippery mat are evidence that I’ve had a good workout. I lay still with my spine pressed to the mat, my palms facing up to receive. My mind’s eye replays the last hour of disjointed breathing and unbalanced poses, while still searching for soulful connection. I see a familiar six year old boy having a conversation with deity – parts and pieces of thoughts and insight try to squeeze through the present filter of guarded intellect.

Faith and Yoga (and golf) are a great paradox to me. They are counterintuitive, defying logic and our best efforts to domesticate them. The more I strive to grow in knowledge and application, the more apt I am to get in my own way. My one dimensional tendencies and ingrained preference for conformity is in direct conflict with the Spirit that prods me out of the mundane and the confines of imagined limitations. In contrast to yoga, the typical bootcamp style gym class allows me room to maneuver. I don’t have to be the most fit, the strongest, the most athletic – I just have to be willing to work harder than anyone else. I was always ‘that kid’ on the sports team whom it was backhandedly said; “he’s not the best athlete, but he’s got a lot of heart…” That’s pretty much been my modus operandi in life – just work harder and put more heart into it! Oddly enough, Jesus and Yoga don’t play by those rules. The more effort you put into searching for yourself, the further from view you become.

It’s 6:58 PM Monday night and I’m still on my back having some sort of existential trip. Time has slowed and years are clipping by my eyes at a rapid pace. I think back over my 48 year spiritual journey since that defining moment in the hallway – when God was big and multi-dimensional, and filled my six year old soul with wonder. Why had I grown up to make God so small, so narrow, so very much in my own likeness?

In 1995 a book was written by Gary Chapman titled The 5 Love Languages. I read the book, studied the book, taught classes on the book, and still reference it’s basic tenets. The premise is that each person has a unique way that we give and receive love. Similar to the way HR offices use personality profiles when hiring; the 5 Love Languages seeks to help people speak the native language of love to those they are in relationship with. The love languages consist of: Words of Affirmation / Acts of Service / Receiving Gifts / Quality Time / Physical Touch. Prior to my mom’s death, my parents were married for 64 years. Though they certainly loved each other, they spoke completely different love languages. Dad’s love language (like mine) is Words of Affirmation. Mom’s love language was Acts of Service. Dad would wax poetic in a letter or card and espouse all the ways in which he loved her. One day, when feeling like his emotional connection was not being reciprocated, he asked mom if she loved him. Mom assured him that she did, but didn’t feel the need to always be saying the words. He pressed her to tell him the reasons why she loved him. She struggled with articulating the why, but reminded him of all the things that she did which demonstrated her love for him. For mom, actions spoke louder than words. For dad, words were a lifeline. Same feelings – different language.

It’s 7:05 PM Monday night and I’m aware that yogis are rolling up their mats and preparing to leave, but I’m content. Thoughts are rushing at me and I’m praying that I’ll remember them long enough to turn them into sentences. I wonder why the world has less intellectual difficulty understanding that each person is unique and must be related to as such – while also insisting that God relate to us all with strict uniformity. We assume that in order to prove our sincerity to God (and win his approval), we must lose our individuality by doing the right things, saying the sanctioned phrases, conforming to an approved belief system, and devoting our time and energy to the status quo. This fear driven dogma manifests itself in two ways – Our inability to accept that God created us in his likeness – therefore our diversity and the way we demonstrate our love is a reflection of His diversity, and ability to love us unconditionally. Our greater terror, is that those who look on us will judge our spiritual journey as lacking and unacceptable to what is required, and what they are willing to offer God. So we speak to each other, and worse yet we speak to God, in a foreign tongue that no one can, or cares to understand.

It’s 1969 and a little boy hears a voice that says to him: “You Have Greatness In You.”  Imagine! My love language is Words of Affirmation, and the One who created me has spoken to me in my native tongue! I’ve spent my entire life wrestling with these words – more honestly, wrestling with the one who spoke them. What do the words really mean? Have I walked in my destiny? How is greatness defined? Were my daughters the manifestation of that greatness? Is my wife the embodiment of the greatness in me? Did my young ego manufacture the encounter? Is confessing the experience nothing more than thinly veiled arrogance? Until this moment, I’ve only given the revelation of these five words to my wife and two daughters. Now I’m stripped bare to the world. Vulnerable, fearful of being misunderstood, that my words intended to express gratitude and encouragement are being spoken in an unknown dialect. But love cannot coexist in the same space as fear. The sacred writings of my tradition tell me that only two things will stand the test of time – My love for the divine, and my love for humanity.  When I was a child, the space that my God resided in was expansive and expressive. As I grew older and supposedly wiser, the space became a box which closed in on me until I had suffocated both God and myself. Though I’m instinctively aware that there is no physical, spiritual, or intellectual space in which I can contain God, my frailty reaches for and finds comfort in boundaries.

Maybe the message is not so complicated. Could it be that God has whispered into the soul of all creation and spoken these very words “You have greatness in you!” Did you hear it long ago and forget what it sounded like? Have the words of the Creator been drowned out by the noise of those who do not speak your native tongue of love? Can you go back and allow yourself to remember? I remember…so I go to my knees and I go to my yoga mat and ask questions, and wait for answers…

Also not me, but I like the possibilities