#resting position

That scene in the ‘Death in the Clinic’ episode of Death in Paradise where Richard introduces Camille to his ‘precision optical instrument’. She says goodnight to it and strokes it with her finger.

Extremely interesting right? Even posture can give you beautiful figure, not fat accumulation. However, if you stand the wrong position will cause you to have osteoarthritis, obesity.

What position is wrong and where is the correct position to be able to lose weight and good for health? * The wrong posture – Standing cats When standing back slightly arch, stooping forward. Your standing position…

Curious noticing is perhaps my favorite spiritual practice. Now, I assume this is partly because I lean towards the contemplative and the intuitive in my outlook. Even so, I find that many of these moments elicit a certain feeling of playfulness in the face of mystery and it gives me this joyful sense that I am glimpsing the sparkly edges of reality when discrete moments of noticing meld into a sort of insight or illumination. While the insights may be rare, I usually get the sense that there is God-work in these moments.

Anyone who reads these ramblings with any regularity knows that my work week includes caring for families who are losing loved ones to the long silence of dementia, the exuberant bouncing of pre-schoolers, and the challenge of building relationships with people living on the margin and community providers who work with them. I also have a real love for formation and helping people give birth to their own authentic soul. Teaching spiritual practice gives me joy, whether it’s helping confirmands connect the sunrise to Morning Prayer, mentoring an individual who is thinking deeply about lay ministry or vowed religious life, or even sitting quietly with a survivor of years of domestic and sexual violence and listening for a starting point for their disciplines.

This week I had a sense of awakening when I came to the realization that the dementia sufferers, the pre-schoolers and some of the people I was encountering through Street Reach and our local drop-in center were all suffering from the same spiritual deficit. Now, it doesn’t present in the same way in all cases. For those struggling with dementia, it comes across as a slow and steady loss. For the pre-schoolers it shows up as the boundless joy of being 3 and an opportunity to learn. For the survivors it usually presents as a missed opportunity and a story of self-judgment that flows out painfully from there.

What is this gap? The absence of the sacrament of the present moment. It’s a lack of self-soothing that grounds us in the here and now. To use a term from physical meditation such as Qi-Gong, they don’t know a resting position. Now, resting positions can be faked by force (restraints, time-outs, isolation) or faked by substitute (opioid painkillers, transferring our pain to others, destroying our ego by enmeshing with another person), but none of these is the same as having a true resting position. This is the place where authentic movement begins, where action stems from, and the building block for virtually every other spiritual practice, whether personal or corporate.

I’m still not sure what God wants me to do with this insight, but I’m holding it loosely in my own resting position, trusting that it will be a gift one way or another. In the meantime, I’m struck that the different presentation of this challenge calls for being present as a companion in different ways.

For the family journeying into the silence of dementia, I find myself focusing on helping the caregivers and friends rediscover the resting position so that they can be in a less anxious, less judgmental present with their loved one who may not understand the pain of their loss. For the pre-schooler, for whom the present is always most vibrant and real, I see the profound value of incarnating the resting pose, whether that’s making praying hands, teaching them child-friendly yoga, or singing songs that involve awareness of your body through movements. For the survivor, I have seen how steadfastly practicing a less anxious presence and modeling the resting position can help to draw them into the present, even when that present remains chaotic and reactive.

Resting Position

Resting Position – "least congruency" [table id=10 /]