Archive for Mind & Body
Ofertory
From St. Joseph I learned
To love my work
And to work for love
Excruciatingly passionate work
Love that is a lot of work, hard work
A passion that I resist hopelessly
And to which I hopelessly surrender
This work of mine is a work of love
Love of God
Love of my country and my people
Love of my family and my friends
Love of my neighbour, near and far
Known and unknown
Lovable and unbearable
Love of my love
My God, my Strength, my Love,
I, little that I am, offer you and beg you
Accept this my work of love
Bless this my work of love
Multiply this my work of love
Put Your love in this my work of love
Do with it what you will
As long as it’s pleasing to You
Add to it what I cannot add
Remove from it what I cannot remove
Even if it means taking it away from me
Even if it means removing me from myself
Hit delete, remove this selfish self from myself
Take away my egocentric ego
From my work, from my love
From me.
This work and this worker are Yours
They were created by You and for You
You put me into this
I trust You’ll get me out of it
This love and this lover are Yours
Created by You and for You
For the giving and for the taking
If You don’t want it, I don’t want it either
St. Joseph, patron saint of workers, of families
Of Canada, of the church
Of my own parish and my own family
Of my vocation and entire life
Twenty-nine years ago today
I was baptized in the parish
That bears your name
If that, perchance, grants me a wish
Here’s my wish, here’s my prayer:
Tell your wife,
To have a word with her Son
And tell Him
That I could use some extra help today
Thank you very much! Send word when you can!
Gratefully as always,
And then some more,
Ester.
Repetitive Strain (II)
It was the day before my birthday when the pain became unbearable. My mother took me to an acupuncturist that used to treat my allergies when I was a child. I´d probably not seen him at least since 1990, when we moved West and my allergies got lost somewhere along the way.
To my surprise, the place hadn´t changed a bit: same plain furniture in the same old spots as before. Only the waiting room seemed too empty: I remember that we used to have to wait for hours, often standing.
The secretary interrupted my thoughts: “First time?” I replied that technically it wasn´t, but that it´d been nearly twenty years since the last time. She decided to go look for file all the same, despite the doctor´s protests (“20 years many time. 5 years ok, but 20 many”). Interesting to note that the doctor too hadn´t changed a bit.
I entered the treatment room, noticed that the posters on the wall also hadn´t changed, lay down on my tummy and the doctor felt my pulse. “Swollen, very swollen, must have pain here in the back also.” As I yelled affirmatively (50% pain, 25% surprise of discovering a new strong pain I didn´t know I had and 25% fright that someone could move so fast), he had no doubt: “Yes. Tendinitis.” This was when I first got to know her name.
Repetitive Strain (I)
It´s been now a bit over a month since I started feeling something I´d never thought I´d ever feel: it started small, a little tingling thing going from the palm of my hand all the way to the elbow, that turned out to be a certain inflammation of the tendons, a.k.a Tendinitis.
This inconvenient lady came slowly, almost imperceptibly. When I started taking Krav Maga, however, I was forced to discover that my ability to do push-ups - which had always been non-existent for lack of biceps – had got a thousand times worse: I was unable to even open my hands flat on the floor without yelling in pain. My instructor did not hesitate to blame Mr. Computer, and taught me some stretching exercises for hands, fingers and wrists (while everyone continued suffering with their push-ups).
This was but the beginning of Ms. Tendinitis´ visit to this humble writer. Since I did not know her in person, I at first mistook her for her cousin, the frightening Ms. WRULD (Work Related Upper Limb Disorder), a.k.a. RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury).
I was terrified. I started to picture in my mind what would become of my poor dissertation, abandoned forever, a rough diamond that would never see the sunlight. Imagination got carried away as lamented the loss of a brilliant writing career, cut at the root by a silly obsession to type everything that head and fingers came across, for the mere love of a keyboard´s tec-tetec-tec.
Serious fun
I used to read a lot when I was a child. A lot. In fact, I used to read so much, I wonder how much of a child I was. I would rather have books than company. I would rather read than play. More than once my parents were called into school by teachers who were disconcerted by my precocious love of reading.
In some senses, I think that this serious attitude of mine helped me grow up quickly. But, at the same time, I think it stunted my development in various other ways. It is as if I’d been a grown-up since I was little, and not always in a good way. People can be unreasonably rational sometimes.
A few weeks ago I posted something about neoteny, and I’ve been thinking about that a lot. Call it Peter Pan syndrome, call it what you will, but there’s something seriously important about being playful. Seriously. And I’m having a great time awakening my inner child (a serious child it is, but still a child).
When I was growing up, I was led to believe that one could not be good at both books and sports. And since I could not remember a time when I did not love reading, I figured that my choice had been made, and therefore it would be greedy of me to also like sports. So I got into this self-fulfilling prophecy that I was “really disastrous” at anything that involved physical movement.
It wasn’t until I was in my mid-twenties that I figured that this either/or mind-body dichotomy was a myth — one that is not only silly, but also harmful. Ever since I’ve been trying to reverse the effects of 25 years of sedentary life, not always successfully (though I’m glad I decided to do it now rather than wait another 25 years).
First it was biking, and then dancing, and then moving from my belly-button. Yesterday I hit some golf balls for the first time. And played frisbee. And jumped on a trampolin. And to my great surprise, it was not a disaster. On the contrary.
Now one self-fulfilling prophecy gives way to another one: and a much more self-fulfilling one at that! Hope my books don’t get too jealous, and if they do, well, too bad for them!
Navel-gazing
So the Ancient Greeks thought they were the navel of the world. If that is not egocentrism (literally), then I don’t know what is.
Now, in this last visit to Greece I didn’t have time to go to Delphi, the precise spot where the belly-button of the world is supposed to be. But I did do a lot of navel-gazing nevertheless.
Actually, I’ve been doing an unusual lot of navel-gazing in the last couple of months. Not that navel-gazing is that unusual for me, but this time I’ve varied not only the amount, but also the type of umbilical awareness. I’ve been thinking about my physical centre of gravity, my creative core, my storehouse of energy. Whatever that means.
7 weeks ago I made a bold decision. I enrolled in three classes I knew nothing about. I started taking Pilates, Tai Chi Chuan and Nia. I had no idea what they were, but I really needed some motivation to go to the gym, and they were the only classes that fit my schedule. Turns out all the three of them make me focus on centre of gravity. Or my creative core. My storehouse of energy. That little area around that big scar in the middle of our tummies.
Believe it or not, this has huge impact on other things in my life. Like tango. For the longest time I have been trying to figure out what my teacher means by “remember to move from your belly-button, people!”. Belly-button, belly-button, how can you move from somewhere as small as that? But now all of a sudden it makes perfect sense, and it makes such a difference! It helped me to finally figure out how to pivot when I do my ochos! I’m very excited!
This navel gazing business even makes me walk faster, without any extra effort. I usually move from with my extremities, which is why I walk so slow. And by slow I mean really slow: it’s just too much work for my poor feet. Same is true of how much weight I can lift (whether you do it from your hands or from your trunk makes a huge difference). Now I feel I have all this extra strength I didn’t know I had.
So if you’re looking for more creative, energy-producing, grounding type of navel-gazing, maybe you might like to start by paying more attention to your belly-button… Seriously, this is the kind of thing that really moves the very core of my being… Whatever that means.
