lift up your hearts

I've been taking a yoga class for the past several months--nearly a year, now. I've had a home yoga practice for years, but it's been a long time since I've participated in a class, and I was a little nervous about it. But it's been lovely. I go once a week, on Monday mornings, and it's been a calming, centering beginning to my day and my workweek.

In my home practice, meditation can be difficult. I find myself constantly looking at the clock, checking how much time has passed. Sometimes staying in one position for seven or eleven minutes gets uncomfortable. I have a hard time clearing my mind--somehow, when I try to quiet it, all these niggling thoughts well up, fighting to be heard. But in class, meditation becomes easier. I feel no need to look at the clock, because Harriet will let us know when to stop. She encourages us to let those distracting thoughts well up, to acknowledge that they're there, and then to simply let them go. I am learning.

Since my first experience with yoga nine years ago, I've considered it to be one of my spiritual practices, even committing to practicing it daily for Lent a few years ago. So up until this past fall, it's mostly been a solo practice. But since I've begun attending this class, I have rediscovered the delight of a communal practice, and as the months pass, the more I come to see--and appreciate--the similarities between my yoga class and the services at my little church.

Part of the liturgy in our church services goes like this:

Pastor:  Lift up your hearts.
Congregation:  We lift them to the Lord.

It is a spiritual lifting, a lifting of heart-as-soul, heart-as-self, opening our souls/selves to God (or so I always think it to be).

In my yoga class, Harriet uses the same phrase. We are doing a pose--one of the warrior poses, perhaps, or eagle pose, or triangle pose--and she will say, "Lift up your hearts."

It is a physical lifting:  we lift our chests, our physical hearts, breathing deeply, expanding our lungs, opening up all that space inside our ribcage.

And yet.

As I physically lift my heart, standing, quiveringly balancing, in the yoga studio, I feel a spiritual lifting, too, a centering, a lightening.

And as I spiritually lift up my heart, standing in the pew at Our Savior's Lutheran Church, I find myself physically lifting my heart, breathing deeply, expanding my ribcage.

Pondering all this, I remember anew that we cannot divide physical from spiritual. Physical acts are spiritual. Spiritual acts are physical. Perhaps it is easier to see this in a place like a yoga class or a church service. Communion, for example--so obviously both physical and spiritual. Meditation, too--a quieting of both body and spirit.

But what about the rest of our lives? I wonder how we would act differently if we had in mind, at all times, that our physical actions have spiritual repercussions. That eating is a spiritual act. That watching television, going to work, driving a car, are spiritual acts. That things like meditation and prayer--and self-criticism, and anger--affect our physical health. That all our actions are multi-faceted.

This all seems so obvious, yet I know I too often forget the truth of it.

Perhaps that is part of the beauty of spiritual practices, be it yoga or church or salat or walking in the woods: they remind us of the inextricable connection between body and spirit. They help us reconnect spirit and body...and in so doing help us become more fully ourselves.

At the end of each service, Pastor Jean stands at the back of the church and calls out, "Go in peace and serve the Lord!" and we all respond, "Thanks be to God!" and file out, renewed.

At the end of each yoga class, we all sit quietly, heads bowed, palms pressed together in front of our breastbones, and Harriet says, "We share the benefits of our practice today with all beings everywhere, and send them peace. Namaste." And we all repeat, "Namaste." ...and go into our day, renewed.

impressions of Uganda

Colors: red-brown and all shades of green. Green of banana leaves, grass, corn. Mango and papaya and avocado trees, their leaves deep and lush. The green of a landscape that does not have winter, of trees whose leaves fall from dryness, not cold. Green that dazzles eyes accustomed to wintry grey and brown, a rainbow of verdant shades in all directions.

The green overlays red-brown earth, a deep and perfect complement. The clayey soil yields itself up to be shaped into bricks, stacked into walls, covered with tin or thatch, and low homes scatter themselves along every road. Wherever the lush growth has been cleared away, rust-colored earth shows beneath, in yards, on hillsides, in the unpaved roads bumping every which way over the land.

Bright flashes of flowers gleam from the green--trumpet flowers, bougainvillea, enormous purple penstemon, bright white frangipanis with their butter-yellow centers, and hundreds I can't name. And the people, too, are bright flowers moving among the green, along the ruddy earth, dressed in yellows and purples and reds. Women walk along the dusty roadside, wearing bright stiff fabric that shimmers in the sunlight. Soccer jerseys abound, in red and yellow and black, as do crisp white or blue or grey button-downs. Many buildings are left their natural red-brown, but others are painted in vivid hues, and I understand the myriad billboards (and buildings, and walls) promoting Sadolin Paints: Colour Your World.

Smells: the acrid aroma of burning trash, of diesel engines running . . . but beyond the cities and roads, the scent of rich, humid air, humus, green things growing and decaying back into the red earth. Breezes that smell of water, the freshness of air swiftly moving above the vastness of Lake Victoria. The scent of cooked meat, chapatis frying, a panoply of foods.

Sounds: in the city, a cacophony of horns, tires screeching, large trunks bu-bumping over speed humps and potholes, music blaring from clubs and cars. Away from the masses of humanity, the humming buzz of insects underlies all other sound. Hadada ibises squawk their name raucously: "HaDAda! HaDAda!" Red-tailed monkeys chatter in the trees, leaping from branch to branch, causing the limbs to sway, dip low, then spring wildly up again with a loud rustling of leaves. In the distance, a dog barks, or a bass beat thrums. 

In the jungly forest preserves, silence reigns at first, but for slight rustlings here and there as birds flutter down to land on high branches, or insects click their way along. Cool shade lingers beneath the canopy, and our footsteps crackle leaves and twigs. Tracking chimpanzees, we pause for long minutes, hoping to hear their calls, but the jungle is hushed and dim, the only sounds our quiet breathing in the humid air. We are in a deep green womb, listening to our hearts thrumming, sensing the hidden life all around us. We walk the paths slowly, listening, listening. Suddenly, wild chattering bursts out only a few dozen yards away, and we walk quickly along the path to where a family of chimps argues loudly high in the trees, leaping from branch to branch, sending leaves swirling down to where we stand below. Their raucous calls fill the air, and I can hardly believe that all was silence just a few moments before.