Tag: Guilt

Walking Meditation

Rita Sommers-Flanagan2 Comments

Last night, I tried to calm my restless body by changing my mental focus from doomscrolling to consciously observing each muscle involved in rolling over. Impossible. There are so many intricacies in even such mundane movements that my mind gave up and wandered back to the terrors facing humanity.

At a silent retreat decades ago, I learned about walking meditation. You progress at a snail’s pace, noticing each miniscule dimension of your body moving forward. As the foot comes up, are the calf and quad engaged? Does the foot adjust its angle, ready to be placed forward on the floor? Is the surface level? What are your eyes doing?

Gradually, the lifted foot glides down, settles, and the process shifts to the other side.

Such deliberate awareness requires concentration, patience, and time. And if a novice sees a daddy long-legs climbing up her jeans, her reflexes will override all that consciousness, and the sequence will be blown to smithereens. Trust me on this.

Humans are a bundle of electrical/chemical communication systems, most of which we neither notice nor understand. Our neurotransmitters interact with electrical impulses to give us motion, thoughts, and feelings, some of which are based in reality, some of which are not.

If you imagine a slice of lemon on your tongue, you’ll likely salivate. The salivation is real, but there’s no lemon there. It’s the power of mind over body. But our bodies can send signals that are open to interpretation. The power of body over mind. We’re a jungle of actions, reactions, reasons, biases, and instincts. Though we think we make conscious decisions, somewhere near 95% of the forces that influence what we do, think, and feel are outside our awareness (including the latest evolutionary mutation: algorithms).

“So, am I real?” the Intruder asks in a sly voice.

“You’re a figment. A fragment. An iron fist and a fuzzy notion. There’s definitely something real about you,” I answer, defenses at the ready.

“And do you love me?”

My teeth begin to grind. To love the Other Within runs against the grain of most conscious urges. We’re built to procreate, not sacrifice. We’re a me-first, guilt-ridden species.

“Is that a look of panic on your face?” my Coauthor asks with fake innocence.

I freeze.

“Relax,” She continues. “We’ve written a little Psalm that may help.”

 What you know may not be true.
You see mostly what you want to see.
Insisting that you’re right is wrong.
Choosing to be loving is like sucking lemons.
But the alternatives are worse.
Trust me on this.

God beams and slugs my shoulder. I flinch a little and slug back. We walk.

Co-Author Explodes Again

Rita Sommers-Flanagan2 Comments

My co-author blew up yesterday. This happens when realities clash or there are temperature extremes. First, hairline cracks appear in God’s image–like they do in cement when you’ve poured a slab but failed to make the relief cuts required to handle the stress of shrinkage. The cracks widen into fissures. The rumbling grows into thunderous protests working their way up from the bottom of soul. And then as they say in the comics: Ka-boom. The Confetti of God swirls in the sky while bits of fuselage and bone drift down. It can have a chilling effect, so I usually position myself in direct sunlight and wait. Sometimes I add a layer or two of outerwear. Right now, I have on pajamas and two fleece vests.

In a little while, I’ll start picking up the pieces–carefully and without judgement. That’s not to say I won’t cry, but for now, I can handle it. God has strange ways of saying “I love you.” I try to allow for the idiosyncrasies involved in our intimate but elusive relationship. There are other ways I could make it through life but none of them are very appealing.

While I wait, the little gods wash downstream like easy plastic, insisting on their right to kill the dolphins and coral reef. The bigger gods don’t float. They’re a series of bad ideas that reposition their fat hinnies after each disruption, causing damaging aftershocks, gluttonous wealth, and great misery.

A manifestation of Nothing is caught in the crystal formation to my left. “Hello, God.” I say, as I watch the same sun at work, warming what will always be Nothing as it warms my vested, innocent shoulders. “Why do I feel so guilty?”

The Voice of God is green and unbelievably forgiving. The Eyes of God are as reassuring as last year’s nest blown down, still lined with soft feathers plucked from the underbelly of creation. The ways I defend myself are ineffective over the long haul and the ways I try to care for other aspects of creations…equally so. Maybe that’s why God needs to explode, but I don’t like it. The responsibilities for reassembling weigh me down.

“They weigh me down, too,” God tells me, as we slide westward, following the light and warmth, stiff from chronic disappointments and damaged joints. “There seems to be no end to the adjustments required.”

“I know,” I say. “That’s why I’m glad you invented Sabbath. Let’s rest a bit. I’ll put you back together tomorrow.”

“Sounds good,” God agrees. And we curl into the perfect fractal for an afternoon nap.

When God Is Old

Rita Sommers-Flanagan6 Comments

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God was so old today, I hardly recognized him. Not a vision of loveliness, by any stretch. But should God be lovely? Youthful? Sexy? Yes, in my opinion, that would be nicer. But I didn’t turn away. I gazed on the decrepit body, looked into eyes filmy with cataracts. Tolerated the musty odor. Sank my teeth into the putrid truth of decline, flesh draped loosely on frail bones, a framework coming apart.

“What’re you up to?” I asked with false cheeriness, hoping for a rapid transformation. God can do that—one thing one moment, another the next. In the blink of an eye, God can go from bird to mosquito, river to refugee, pauper to king. But the only blink today was a slow one, as God’s focus landed laboriously on me.

“Hi, stranger,” he said, with a wry smile. That was all it took to transform my feeble friendliness into open hostility. This passive-aggressive, accusatory, guilt-inducing shriveled up mockery of life, insinuating I hadn’t been visiting him enough? Acting as though we’re such good friends, like I should visit every day, like I should move in, like I owed him something? I sat silent, but I fumed inside. How dare he try to prevail on my time? I have a life, you know. Why is he old like this?

But with God, if you think it, you may as well say it. His head dropped to his chest, clearly hurt, maybe even afraid. “Sorry,” he said, drawing into himself even further.

I was stricken and ashamed. God weathers all sorts of rejections, but mine seemed to cause him real pain. “No, I’m sorry,” I said, and I meant it. I calmed myself and waited for him to lift his head again. I showed him pictures of the grandchildren and garden. I gave him three small beets, an onion, and a large bouquet of deep green parsley. I reached over and patted his translucent hand. “When will this be over?” I asked, with the little patience I could muster.

He didn’t respond, but I knew the answer. Always. Never. God is a transitional verb, unconstrained. God is a hall of mirrors, a blaze of glory on a far horizon. A voluptuous virgin, a greasy-haired teen. But today and forever, God is an old, old man. None of this is acceptable to my primitive mind. My digital watch constantly flashes an ever-changing hour, but the knobby joints in my fingers still bend. God and I hold hands. He eventually nods off and I am free to go. I step into the slipstream of an apparent day, trying to accept the transitory nature of all things real.