Sick Pilgrim
“My children…This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13)
I was involved in a mom’s group at our church. Just a couple of women each time, led by a nun a little on the serious side. There were no thrills, no frills. We looked at what the reading would be for the next week and Sister Joanne would ask probing questions to pry words out of our modest little mouths. We mostly sat around looking at our hands silently begging for someone to just please offer something. Because my threshold for awkward is below sea level, it was always me, the hyper-friendly convert, driveling on and on, and I left annoyed with myself week after week, feeling like I’d probably talked too much.
One day Sister Joanne asked us to begin our lesson by closing our eyes and taking a few deep breaths– a little uncomfortable in such a small group, but Sister Joanne seemed to have no trouble with the artlessness of dragging people along.
On our first big inhale she said, “Breathe God in,” and on our exhale she said to, “Breathe love out.” Over and over she said it. “Breathe God in, Breathe love out.”
And, just like that, through several inhalations and exhalations, our stiff group sat there experiencing God together as easy as the air we breathed. There was something about remembering our most basic function side by side, practicing it in rhythm that made me want to reach for my neighbor’s hand, rest my palm on her knee.
We filled our lungs and forgot our hesitation. Cheerful and willing, we went about our reading for that day. No one got a lobotomy or anything. I mean we were still us, but on the spectrum of silent/awkward/painful, our time together was much less scarring. It was nice. The breathing seemed to loosen something locked between us. Why? Because we shared something simple? I couldn’t be sure.
I was reminded of the yoga classes I’ve taken over the years– the ins and outs, the oddity of experiencing solitude right next to another, and by God, the magic of oxygen. Without moving a muscle, I’d found myself practicing yoga that morning with Sister Joanne and my shame-faced sisters.
I’d practiced yoga before and used it as my own personal prayer space. But that day with Sister Joanne gave me an idea. What if–instead of a nameless, intentionally vague yoga class–what if Jesus was actively celebrated throughout a class through scripture, meditation, breathing, music, prayer, stillness, community, and worshipping through our moving bodies that house His Spirit? Yes, please! Christian Yoga! My excitement led me to yoga school, where I got my certifications.
Then, naively, I called around, dropped by churches, and with my brightest smile asked if there was a room they could spare one night a week to house a few searchers while we practiced Christ-centered yoga. The initial responses were different but the end results were the same– a quick and easy “No”.
When church employees were trying to be polite, they would let me know they already had an exercise program and then stare at me with a fixed smile until I was all the way out of the door and headed to my car. When they weren’t trying to be polite, they would say that they weren’t sure that yoga wasn’t from the devil.
With the first and second and third rejection, I gracefully accepted our differences and left with hope for the courageous, open mind of the next church. But with each rejection spreading my hope more and more thin, I felt the growing desire to defend myself in those potpourried offices. It was exasperation and hopelessness that led to this conversation.
After I explained my desires, a thin, well dressed, perfectly bobbed, middle aged lady in navy pumps at the helm of her oversized desk said this:
Office Staff: Are you aware that yoga has Hindu roots?
Me: I am.
Office Staff: Are you aware that those people use yoga to pray to their gods?
Me: I am.
Office Staff raises eyebrows to say: Well?????
Me: Well, I think worship is intentional. I don’t think anyone in my class would accidentally become a Hindu if that’s what you mean.
Office Staff: So you think it’s ok to pray the exact same way that a Hindu prays?
Me: Hmmm. More so I believe that time seeking communion with God is covered, protected. You know, ‘where two or more gather.‘ Our hearts are fixed on Him and our motives are pure and to think that God doesn’t honor that just isn’t the God that I know.
Office Staff: Well, I guess I’m not sure how well you know God since you aren’t at all cautious. This seems reckless.
Me: Oh. Yeah? Well, I’m not sure how well YOU know God since you aren’t at all open to a physical, moving prayer when it’s God who came up with the magic of our bodies, what makes them healthy, the science of oxygen, carbon dioxide, stretching, and breathing, and the beauty of great music?!!! I’m not sure HOW WELL YOU KNOW GOD since you can’t even take one little step outside of this silk flowered office space. And by the way, Hindus also pray by kneeling. Should we quit doing that, too?! They pray by chanting and singing. SHOULD WE QUIT DOING THAT? GREGORIAN MONKS HAVE BEEN CHANTING FOR CENTURIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! JESUS, WHY ARE PEOPLE SUCH JERKS?!?! (I didn’t know if one single thing I said was true, but I was emotional enough to yell it.)
Office Staff, staring directly over my shoulder at my car’s back wheel crossing the white line of my parking spot, nonchalantly, smiling tight: Oh. Yeah? I’m a jerk? Well, you kind of parked like a jerk. So you can go now. The answer is no.
She was calm and cool and certain. I was frantic and desperate and pissed. And there we were, two people following the same God, cussing each other out in our heads– her for my mindlessness, me for her heartlessness.
I’m embarrassed to admit to this verbal combat in the office of a church, but the dark truth is that it happens all the time in my head.
Other Christians drive me crazy.
All day, every day, not even for very good reasons, they just annoy me. And the people who annoy me the most are people who are annoyed by other people. I know. God has a rich sense of humor. The people on the receiving end of my judgement are the judgmental. The feminist angry that my church doesn’t ordain women the way her perfect church does. The cynic making fun of the crafty mom who brings in creative decorations and treats to Sunday school. The conservative Catholic questioning the holiness of the Pope when he leans toward mercy rather than judgement. The haughty priest making fun of Joel Osteen because he is … the way he is. I slap my forehead, grit my teeth and roll my eyes at all the other eyerollers and join the large crowd of people connected by hate.
And we stare at each other dumbfounded that church membership is declining.
As a sister, I stay at the throat of my brother and speak harshly against him for not holding my conviction. I find it quite alright to bang my head because I cannot fathom how someone could disagree with me. Yearning for a place to stand where I am the most right, I hang out in my smallest concentric circle and tsk tsk at those in the larger circles surrounding me. If only they could be a little more right, just a little closer to center. But the truth is that Jesus died for people who killed Him and I am rolling my eyes at people who disagree with me.
Can we let that hang for a second?
In an attempt to combat my cynicism, I’m trying to focus on this: we all share something simple. Just like that small, sheepish circle of women being led by a nun to reduce our awkwardness, simply inhaling and exhaling in unison, finding something sacred in the oxygen we breathe, I’ve decided to strip it down to the most elemental of connections. We are all children of God. All of us. Just children. With our own desires and gifts and needs and bruises and bullies and big big dreams. Children. Where the world is confusing and nothing fits right and things are always sticky and we are scared. Children. Picturing us together as children, it is helping.
We are told that unity and love between members will be the hallmark of legitimate discipleship. And Jesus goes so far as to call it a new commandment:
“So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.”
These words were spoken in the upper room. Jesus was not speaking to the masses. He was speaking to those closest to him, the apostles.
We will not be recognized as Christians by our t-shirts or play lists or beards or glass water bottles. We will not be known by our doctrines or our interpretations of Scripture or our positions on infant baptism or our end times theologies. We will be known by our love.
We all believe that Jesus came, Jesus died, and Jesus rose again. The source of unity, of course, is Jesus, and all other matters, even if they are important, need to be scaled down to their proper proportion. In focusing my eager energies on divisive matters, I take my eyes off the magnitude of Jesus’ love for every last one of us, His children.
Taking up our causes with people who disagree with us and extending kindness only to those who can fit in the smallest circle? There’s nothing supernatural about that. Kindness in the midst of disagreeing? Stripping down to the most basic thing that connects us–the air we breathe the sister and brotherhood we share– despite two opposite, tightly held convictions? Well, there is something divine about that. It is certainly not human nature.
And this is how we will be called disciples.
I am no longer mad at those people who were cautious about allowing yoga in their buildings. I do not think they are stupid. I am not rolling my eyes at them. Not because I agree with them, but because Jesus’s words revealed that the size of my opinion doesn’t matter when compared to the size of God’s love.
Yoga makes some people feel cautious. Big deal. For them, yoga might actually be dangerous. How do I know? For me it happens to be healing. Instead of concentrating on the disparity, insisting on sameness, I can instead concentrate on the fundamentals–Jesus came, Jesus died, Jesus rose again- and there just might be something about remembering our most elemental truth side by side, remembering that we are children, that will make me want to reach for my neighbor’s hand, rest my palm on her knee. Sharing something simple might loosen something locked.
My husband was coaching tee ball the other night. The kids, no matter what, with earnest precision, at the end of every game, rush to him and ask breathlessly, “What was the score, coach?!” And my husband shakes his head and laughs. It’s an audacious thought, in the middle of all that chaos, that they want to know who did it best. He laughs, thinking of the kid who collects dirt rocks while in the outfield consistently bringing them to the pitchers mound no matter what else is going on on the field, and the little girl who practices her cartwheels and lets grounders roll right on by, and the second baseman who gets confused when the other team gets a hit and starts running the bases himself … backwards.
And yet they desire to have a place to stand the tallest, the most right, the winningest. They long for a way to measure so that they might know for certain they are better. All the while butchering the fundamentals of baseball, the kids are dying to know.
He clasps their shoulder and looks them in the eye and says, “We’re all even, kiddo. We’re all even out there.”
Allison M. Sullivan is the author of the essay collection Rock, Paper, Scissors. She lives in Bryan, Texas, with her husband, Seth, and their four children, Sylas, Amelia, Blaise, and Wren. While in the trenches of motherhood, she’s currently applying her degrees in special education and cynology outside of the classroom. She is on the board of Elizabeth House Maternity Home and teaches a re-entry course at a women’s prison. She also teaches yoga.
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