Don’t Slip the Punches

As I understand it, into the heart of every Christian, Christ comes, and Christ goes. When, by his Grace, the landscape of the heart becomes vast and deep and limitless, then Christ makes His abode in that graceful heart, and His Will prevails. The experience is recognized as Peace. In the absence of this experience much activity arises, divisions of every sort. Outside of the organizational enterprise, which some applaud and some mistrust, stands the figure of Jesus, nailed to a human predicament, summoning the heart to comprehend its own suffering by dissolving itself in a radical confession of hospitality.

( Unknown-some Kojeve dialectic sprinkled with Heidigger, and Leonnard Cohen lyrics)

New Vessel New Life

!2/23/05 San Miguel

To be a leader requires strength. So grateful to be boxing again. The intense workouts, speedbag, mitts and hitting the big bag build me up, strong and balanced. And if I don’t do it, weaker serratus and shoulder muscles allow my right scapula to drift, winging out, a weakness due to an old injury.

So I didn’t faff around with E-mail or surfing the web for Lecon, Jaynes, RD Laing or Wilhelm Reich theories and constructs. I jumped rope after coffees. Did some ab work.

I started to see the pieces fall into place. A breakthrough. What all this old pain and terrible fear and anxiety was trying to keep in place and expel, at the same time. The staleness of an old way of life. All of the hard work I have done, that has defined my life, is about to come into focus and integrate.

Of course, that is scary,too. I must straighten up, tighten up, clarity, strong strong body, energy moving freely, unimpeded in order to best do my best work.

Leonard Cohen music (lyrics) helpful.

Drum beats. Timely.

The hurt I had not processed from the old, although I “got it” intellectually.

I voted with my heart to not accept the way of life

I had been groomed for. But I kept a foot in both worlds, especially as I found myself divorced with three little boy, shortly after my father’s death. I came home.

My insistence on being “Me” under the scrutiny of Natchitoches resulted in hard core rejection. I was a pariah. Many felt threatened; If I could be alright living with my choices it somehow negated their choices, it was explained to me.

The women in sororities, and Service League viewed me the same way as the tennis women at the Country Club- they spoke disparagingly of my Center for the Healing Arts. Of my divorcee status. Of me being just short of a tuban on my yogini head with macrobiotic children who didn’t know what a pork chop was.

The Presbyterian church minister whom I had donated shiatsu sessions to said I’d been removed from the church records. This punitive severance, communal judgment and harsh intolerance, all based on misunderstanding of my uniqueness, was followed by cloying sicky sweet, unenticing offerings of little cakes, invitations to teas or shopping when my successes became known. They liked the novelty. I was their pet alternative healer, spouting pithy lines of wisdom which, most often, flew over empty heads.But not Anna’s.

The same thing that sells, no matter how you frame it package it peddle it. The Nuevo. People buy because they are bored. They buy because they like you, you unbore them.

“Most people do their own thing,” Godfrey, my spiritual teacher told me, “it’s just that most people’s own thing is so insipid, nobody notices.” Hazlett notes human beings’ general proclivity for insipid choices, behavior, thought patterns, in the Pleasure of Hating. I don’t hate anyone, yet I have chosen aloneness.

And I am as alone this Christmas in San Miguel as Bad King John in A.A. Milne.

I have the boys, on the phone. And I am tra la la ing with a sense of capricious freedom that I have never been allowed at this stressful, demanding time of the year. I have bought no presents, sent no cards, E-mail or mail with Christmas themes. I have said “no” to Christmas parties with strangers, where I was invited by some old explorer of the arctic who just wants to get laid. Lap dog laid in San Miguel.

All spiritual lessons wash over me, all ashrams, roshis, yoga and meditation teachers, acupuncturists, lovers, body workers, all healers- touch, light, love, hurt all remembrance is here. And as it is so present it is a task master. But the fear and agonizing anxiety is subsiding, being replaced by this call for battle, “I have led Nations” front line general feeling. Take charge. Be strong and productive and disciplined. Me gusto!!! Inherent in the taking charge is the strength to surrender it in order to have the willingness to truly surrender.

I heard the letting go and no letting go dilemma in Leonnard Cohen’s lyrics, his reference to a Faulkner story, and in my dreams. I alternate between packing up a house and searching for and discovering the new place, and realizing that I can unpack before I move, that a move is not necessary.

Being at home is the activity of not needing to look for a home, and not needing to abandon a home.

The mirrors are clear,

shadows are past,

the wandering heart

is homeless at last. (Cohen)

The letting go and no letting go, the tooth by a strand of flesh. Placenta. You create and birth new life and then something else must be faced, dealt with, birthed…that which really supported the new life. The maker of blood and nutrients.

Placenta as engine:
So one gets birthed, morphed, to a new existence, job, relationship, addiction, definition. And it takes a while to drink in the new situaition and to know how to respond. This is an interesting phenomenon and a holy time. One can take years with it…chop wood haul water. Or fling yourself in the deep end.

Everything comes up. There is no place to hide. This time, 23 and a half years later, I don’t think I have to go to a retreat or Sasheen or even live outdoors, although San Miguel is experienced, to a large degree, out of doors. I wear sunscreen, haven’t sunk to wearing big hats, which along with big rings is the territory of older women. Older than I feel women.

I think I go though this one with writing as refuge, writing as sasheen.

.“Every heart to love will come, but like a refugee.” I heard Leonnard Cohen sing.