Sick Pilgrim
I’ve loved yoga for years, but since the pandemic, I’ve committed to its practice with a new fervor. Almost every single day of the past year, yoga has been my nonnegotiable.
Not that I have the time for it. With three children at home, two of whom are involved in online school (and the other one still nursing), someone needs a piece of me at all times. And that’s before I think of my work obligations, which are full-time and intense. And then there’s me as a wife, as a friend, as a human.
But I remember that spiritual aphorism: “On the days you don’t have time to pray, pray longer.” In addition to my daily Liturgy of the Hours, dips into Scripture, and countless cries to God all day and night, yoga has taken on a prayerful significance, giving me a space to be honest with my mind and my body, before and beyond the roles others need me to play. On my mat alone, I stand in courage, in trust, sometimes in brokenness; I stand before my God.
On the days that feel impossible, the ones that sometimes fill with dread, I find peace in knowing I will prioritize that time of vigorous, flowing rhythm. In moving my body in somewhat expected, but always slightly different ways, I tap into one of the only avenues I’ve found to step out of the otherwise unrelenting machinations of my own mind. In the flow, I sense an invitation to enter the greater Flow, tapping into the Spirit.
“I will put my spirit in you that you may live . . . says the Lord.”
Ezekiel relays the Lord’s promise in our first reading from Year A this weekend. And man, I believe in that promise. Every Thursday, my day is packed with meetings, and by 4:30, I’m often faceplanting on the floor, crying and fighting off a pounding headache. But when I step on the mat and start to breathe and move, I feel the Spirit in spite of myself. By the end, I know the heaviness, the hard decisions, the thick emotional processing still exist all around me, but they don’t own me anymore. I can move from my center again, breathing in new life.
“O my people, I will open your graves and have you rise from them . . . Then you shall know that I am the Lord.”
Over and over again, my Lord, you have opened my grave and given me your Spirit.
And speaking of graves . . . death scares the hell out of me. It always has. I don’t like to think about it, I don’t like to write about it, I don’t like to pray about it. But I can’t help but notice that this weekend’s readings have quite a bit to do with death. Both Gospel readings speak to it.
Our John 12 Gospel has Jesus proclaiming, “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.” Our Year A Gospel from John 11 tells us about the death and raising of Lazarus. And let’s admit it, as we move toward Holy Week (and, let’s say it, through this pandemic), there is no way to evade the realities of death.
Neither is it lost on me that the most beautiful pose of the practice, savasana, translates to “corpse pose.” And after a pulsating flow (or a pulsating day), I long for it. In savasana, I practice the skill of trust and surrender, neither of which come naturally.
In the Gospel for this week, Jesus compares himself to a grain of wheat, telling his disciples he must die. But after this startling revelation, he proclaims, “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself.”
Speak, Lord; your servant is listening. I hear you. I’ll admit it: I do pray to enjoy a long and full life, but most of all, I want to be near you. I want to live free from fear. I feel your Spirit urging me to trust, to sense your presence and know that wherever I go, in life or in death, in flow or in savasana, you are there. And wherever you are . . . that is Life.
Holly Mohr works in formation in Pittsburgh, PA. She shares a beautiful and slightly eccentric life with her husband and three children.
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