unsettling peace

When I was in first grade, my family went to Disney for christmas. We stopped at a little kiosk in one of the parks where they sold mugs on which they would write your first name, and the other side would be a brief description of your name’s origins and meanings. My parents got one for each my sister and me.

According to my mug, my name is rooted in the name Katherine, which is Greek for pure. It was nothing more than a fun trinket, somewhere to keep my pens, until I started counseling after my engagement/marriage ended.

My counselor had had a professor who taught him that what we call ourselves is important. He asked if I knew what my name meant, and I told him: Greek for pure. He asked what I thought about that, being named Pure. I started crying — purity had been taken from me at a young age, had never really felt like a choice. It’s not one of those things you can really get back. A marked page is permanently stained.

He patiently heard my explanation, my self-hatred, my shame. He let me mourn for a moment before defining my name as he saw it: I may not have purity of body, but he saw a purity of heart that radiated from me. A purity that resides within my soul. A purity that cannot be stained or even tainted.

His definition gave me the grace to re-claim my name. I no longer had to hate that part of myself, no longer viewed ‘Kate’ as a mocking burden to carry, but rather as a blessing to live up to.

I hadn’t thought about that interaction for some time, until class last week. I’m working on my Master of Divinity, having moved across the country following the call of a God who I know only well enough to know I will never understand. I cry daily because I don’t know what I’m doing here. I’m supposed to be here, but as for what I’ll do with my degree… I’m lost. I fight with God daily.

The session with my counselor came back to me when my professor (who was, years ago, my counselor’s professor) was retaliating against a student’s criticism, and threw out “blessed are the peacemakers, blessed are the pure, blessed are whatever…” and continued on his argument, but I had stopped listening. Blessed are the pure. Blessed are the pure of heart. That’s me. What is the other half of the blessing?

I turned to my Bible and looked up Matthew 5: Blessed are the pure of heart, for they will see God.

I’m unsettled about seeing God, but I at least have the peace of that blessing, which had been waiting to surprise me from the most visible of places — my own name.

back

I asked Keller to tell me something specific that he loves about me, something that’s unique to me. He said a few things, and as I hugged him he started rubbing my back. I closed my eyes and fell into a place of deep peace and love that I feel whenever he does this. And he added, softly, “and I love how much you love it when I touch your back.”

I laughed. Who doesn’t love to be touched by the hands of the one who loves them? He said it was different, that when he touches my back I love it to an extent that most people don’t feel anywhere on their bodies, and it’s my back. How unusual.

But I do, I love it. Nothing calms me down so quickly, relaxes me so thoroughly, as fingertips lightly down my spine.

So, confronted with my weirdness, I thought back on why this is so comforting to me. And suddenly put together the love I feel now with a memory.

When I was young, I hated going to church. My sister and I had to wear dresses and tights and sit still and the service was so boring. I remember lying in bed on Sundays, thinking that if I stayed there long enough my parents might suspect I was sick, or that I was still sleeping, and would let us miss a week of church. This rarely succeeded, and the times it did I had wasted the entire morning confined to my bed. Most weeks, we’d be up and dressed and out the door all in a rush so that we could sit in a pew and do nothing for what felt like hours.

And yet… when I was very young, too young to be expected to really pay attention to the services, my mom would let me lie my head in her lap. I’d sit on the edge of the pew, my feet not even able to reach the floor, and bend at the waist to use her leg as a pillow. She’d stroke my hair, pulling it off my face, her fingernails gently scratching my scalp. Each strand pulled back revealed more of the red hymnal and grey Bible nestled in the back of the pew in front of us. And as I closed my eyes my mom would run her hands, lightly, lovingly, across my back. Sometimes I only got to stay there for a few minutes before she had to stand to sing or my dad would prod me into an upright position. Sometimes my timing was better and I’d be there for the entire sermon. Either way, when her fingers met the rise and fall of my back as I breathed, I entered into that place of eternal timelessness where the knowledge of being loved meets shalom.

So, when Keller touches my back, it’s not only about the present moment. It’s about the knowledge of him loving me and the deep contentment I experience in our relationship, but it’s also an instant transportation to my mother’s love, in a church that celebrates God’s love.

And in just a few weeks, we’ll find our way back to that same church where God will join our community in celebrating our love — even the weirdness of it.

orphan

Last week Keller and I were invited for dinner with his boss, her husband, their two young children, her parents, and her brother. Meals lately are usually just Keller and me since we don’t know many people here, and even if we did, we have neither the funds to go out nor a place to host a dinner. Being there was a joy; the meal was delicious, but it was the conversation and the people, the crowded noisiness, the background babble banter of young boys — it comforted and welcomed me in a deep part of my soul, a place I often recognize as satiated during these rare big-family moments.

The desire is more than just the last few weeks; this isn’t really about meals being only the two of us. Even when my small family of four all slept in one house, we didn’t really live there together. Most evenings my sister’s swim practices or social schedule interfered, and if it wasn’t her activities, it was my violin stuff*. Family dinners didn’t even compete as a priority.

The Old Testament talks frequently about taking care of orphans, widows, and foreigners, and Jesus puts much emphasis on doing so. So I keep my eyes open for people who may fit in these categories, not only literally, but all the ways in which people are abandoned, lonely, or unwelcome. What I hadn’t realized was that doing so kept the focus on the other, never addressing the ways in which I am orphaned, widowed, foreign.

Minutes after saying goodbye to the boss’s three generations of biological and adopted family, Keller and I got in the car, and for most of the drive back home I couldn’t stop talking about the warmth and noise. I deeply cherish times spent in these multi-generational households and meals; the most recent I can remember was last year’s Thanksgiving spent with our mentor’s children, spouses, and grandchildren. The excited comfort is more than just good food and new people, the joy in these moments points to the desire of an orphan. With busy and social parents, and an even-more social sister, my immediate family wasn’t enough to fill our house. My parents are still married, my sister is alive and well, and yet in some ways I am very much an orphan, and am just now beginning to understand this.

 

 

*Violin stuff is the umbrella term I use that includes: symphony orchestra, chamber orchestra, church orchestra, musical pit orchestra, private lessons, teaching younger students, quintets, quartets, duets, and – oh yeah – personal practice time for all of those. I include this only because it was actually more time-consuming than ‘violin’ alone sounds.

taking up space

I used to hide.

As a kid, I’d find a small nook and curl up, sometimes reading, sometimes just being there feeling cozy. I would go under desks or chairs, into closets. At night I would try to make myself invisible under the covers, leaving only enough space at the top of the sheets for fresh air. I liked to pretend it was a cave. My parents have a photo they think is hilarious: me, curled up fast asleep under a cabinet.

I never thought of this as a weird or unusual habit until I started reading about childhood abuse, and children who burrow into small spaces as a way to hide. Not necessarily hiding from any particular abuse, but apparently it’s common for children to find small spaces when they want to be cuddled. Or to tuck themselves away when they feel like they’re supposed to be invisible.

I stopped regularly seeking out nooks, but in many ways I continued hiding. I stopped eating to make myself disappear. When that didn’t work, I ate for comfort and used layers of dark clothes to be invisible, always feeling poorly about how much space my body took up. I became emotionally invisible: I suppressed smiles; I suppressed tears. I was silent even when I had opinions to contribute.

All of which makes beginning seminary very difficult. Spirit isn’t something that you can observe and comment on; it requires opinion and exploration. It requires strong voice, and the right to claim it. Doing so, especially as  a woman in a field that doesn’t necessarily welcome women, is terrifying.

Which is why I know I wouldn’t be enrolled if it weren’t for krav. The practice of claiming that I’m worth fighting for has been empowering. It’s given me the right to keep my spine straight, to make myself bigger. The physical act infiltrated into my being; my body had to show my soul that I’m worth space. So now, my soul is starting to explore what it means for it to stand up for itself – to claim voice, to share opinion.

The area this continues to show for me most is in writing. I leave days between posts, believing that what I say isn’t worth anyone’s time, isn’t worth the space it takes up. I cut ideas short and delete paragraphs, thinking that no one will want to read anything I have to say.

Now I’m starting to hear: it doesn’t matter. Do the work, let people decide how they respond to it, or even if they approach it. God just asks that I do the work I’m instructed to do.

inverted lake

In yoga Saturday morning we did my absolute favorite pose, called viparita karani, or Inverted Lake pose. The name comes from the inversion of the body – feet above head – and the organs and belly are completely relaxed, like a tranquil lake.

This pose, more than any other, connects me with something that is both deeply inside my self as well as light-years out into the universe, a place where the infinity of the stars speaks to the infinite pattern of breath moving in and out of lungs.

I started practicing at The Yoga Studio last August, but the classes hadn’t covered Viparita Karani until just a couple weeks ago. Still, I knew the pose intimately and recognized it immediately from my afternoons when I was in middle school.

The summer between 7th and 8th grade, I started losing my friends gradually. Nothing dramatic, but I realized that fewer and fewer of them were willing to spend time with me. They were starting to get into pot, and even though I didn’t care if they smoked around me, I never joined. That my abstinence was their reason for abandoning me became clear when Derek, one of my three remaining friends, said “smoke this or leave.” I didn’t even think about it; I left. It was only after walking a couple miles home that I realized I now had absolutely no friends.

The remainder of the summer and the following school year were hard. I wasn’t the standard for the community and not only did I stand out, I had no desire to fit in. While other girls were wearing “Abercrombie” across their just-grown breasts and challenging the dress code with shorter and shorter skirts, I rallied against corporations who advertised sex and a mass media that encouraged eating disorders. I modified my clothes. I dyed my hair unnatural colors. I retreated further and further into literature, where I found friends I knew would never leave me.

Every afternoon, I went home and upstairs to my room where there was no TV and no one angry or upset. At the time R.E.M.’s single “The Great Beyond” was the epitome of awesome, and I could count on it being played on the radio pretty much every afternoon. So between class (where I was forced to interact with other students) and dinner (where I was forced to interact with my family), I hid out in my room, my torso relaxed on my bed and legs up the wall. Later, when I was able to recognize the severity of the depression, anxiety, and numbness I had felt during that year, I swore that the song saved my life.

But now, with ten more years of wisdom, I recognize the song was only part of it. Yoga brought me back from a different kind of danger last summer and restored me to my path towards the person I was created to be. My error was in thinking that yoga had started me on that path in just the last year, when hints of that path began in my 12-year-old self.

Oh, and my reason for choosing to write about this now? I recently learned that viparita karani has another name it’s known by: the great restoration pose, which clarified my (previously thought) strange behavior a decade ago. To restore: “return to usable and functioning condition; return to life; put together what was torn or broken.”