Namaste
"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these."
-Mark 12:30-31
Before I became a Christian my Mom and Dad had been involved in Siddha Yoga for a while. If you're not familiar with what that is, my limited understanding of it is that they had a "guru" that they would listen to, they went to people's houses for "meditation sessions" and would often visit the Ashram that was in Oakland. This practice was mainly based on Eastern philosophy, with influences from Hinduism and Buddhism. After my parents divorced when I was three, it wasn't long until my Mom started to get back to her Christian roots and went back to church. She had grown up in a very conservative Christian home and in her twenties she rebelled against that in a sense. When she went back to church when I was a young child, she went back to what she had known which meant that her views of everything she had previously been a part of must be evil, Satanic and wrong. There is so much more story to this but what I want to write about this time is the mentality that everything "Eastern" must be avoided and even condemned, at least that's the message that I got as a naive and simple minded child.
It never occurred to me that things like meditation, yoga or mantras might be useful things and absolutely manners in which we can worship God. In recent years (after having kids I might add), I have found that it is essential for me to find ways in which I can calm myself, be more patient and less angry and show my children love even when they're making me crazy. Growing up in the church I learned that when you're struggling all you need to do is pray more, read the Bible more or memorize Scripture. As an adult I have found that most of the time, that just doesn't work for me. The verse that I wrote above is as Jesus himself said "the greatest commandment". I know and believe that reading the Bible is important as well as praying, but is it possible to incorporate these into our lives through practices that come from an Eastern influence? I believe so.
Lectio divina is a traditional monastic practice that has four separate steps: read; meditate; pray; contemplate. There's that word "meditate"! Can we meditate on God's word? Yes! Jesus told us that we are to love God with essentially everything in us and every part of us. I think that Christians have a tendency to look at the body in a very separate sort of way and not as a whole. Wholistic thinking or wellness tends to be looked at as a "hippie" thing but the fact is that God created our physical bodies, minds and emotions to work together and whether we realize it or not when one aspect of us is out of order, it affects another.
A few years ago when I started to practice Lectio divina when reading the Bible I really felt like I was learning more and getting more out of it than ever before in my life. I have done yoga off and on over the years but have recently been practicing more and it's another thing that has changed my life. When my body feels looser, stronger and more rooted to the earth I also feel more relaxed and at peace. When I'm more aware of my breathing it is easier for me to calm down in a moment of anger or frustration. Probably what I love most about yoga is that there is an essence of grace to it. We are encouraged to have grace with ourselves and not attempt a position that might not feel good or right. We need to challenge ourselves yet not feel bad or embarrassed if we fail. Through having grace with myself in the practice of yoga I am more capable of extending grace to others.
Namaste means "the light in me honors the light in you". We were created in God's image, we are beautiful and excellent. What could possibly be a better way to "love your neighbor" than to honor the light in them? When we disagree about something, what could be more helpful than to see and honor the goodness in them? Very recently I experienced some pain. I felt like I was being silenced and like I could only share the parts of me that were cute and nice and I had to stifle the parts that are fired up, opinionated and rebellious. I've been on a journey with this but something I've realized is that when I really disagree with someone or what they say maybe I need to pause, breathe, meditate on it for a moment and begin from a place of truly seeing the goodness and light in them before I give in to the urge to attack. I grew up in California and lived another good part of my life in Seattle so moving to Iowa has been hard. It feels like I'm living in a different country in many ways. What I'm learning though is that I can be completely different from most of the people here but that isn't a bad thing necessarily and learning how to coexist with those that are different from you is a VERY GOOD thing and this is something I've been trying to teach our kids as well.
During this time of quarantine due to Covid-19 we have been living in a madhouse. We're figuring out homeschooling, boundaries and discipline and still trying to have fun and do the things that we the parents want to do as well. Most days I feel like I'm straight up losing my mind. More than any other time in my life I have been craving peace and calm and I could not do it without these practices of meditation and yoga. The last thing I mentioned was having a mantra and it's something I just tried out this morning. When I woke up, before I came downstairs to start our day I said a little prayer just asking God to keep me calm and patient today and to show the kids love, which turned into a little mantra of "be calm have patience and love" and I've been repeating it to myself constantly. I'm not saying this day will be perfect by any means but I can say I haven't yelled yet and when the four year old started freaking out for the tenth time, I called her over, grabbed her hands and tried to get her to breathe with me. People I'm going to be real, I've never done that with her before, so clearly something is working.
I wish you peace and love today. Namaste.
-Mark 12:30-31
Before I became a Christian my Mom and Dad had been involved in Siddha Yoga for a while. If you're not familiar with what that is, my limited understanding of it is that they had a "guru" that they would listen to, they went to people's houses for "meditation sessions" and would often visit the Ashram that was in Oakland. This practice was mainly based on Eastern philosophy, with influences from Hinduism and Buddhism. After my parents divorced when I was three, it wasn't long until my Mom started to get back to her Christian roots and went back to church. She had grown up in a very conservative Christian home and in her twenties she rebelled against that in a sense. When she went back to church when I was a young child, she went back to what she had known which meant that her views of everything she had previously been a part of must be evil, Satanic and wrong. There is so much more story to this but what I want to write about this time is the mentality that everything "Eastern" must be avoided and even condemned, at least that's the message that I got as a naive and simple minded child.
It never occurred to me that things like meditation, yoga or mantras might be useful things and absolutely manners in which we can worship God. In recent years (after having kids I might add), I have found that it is essential for me to find ways in which I can calm myself, be more patient and less angry and show my children love even when they're making me crazy. Growing up in the church I learned that when you're struggling all you need to do is pray more, read the Bible more or memorize Scripture. As an adult I have found that most of the time, that just doesn't work for me. The verse that I wrote above is as Jesus himself said "the greatest commandment". I know and believe that reading the Bible is important as well as praying, but is it possible to incorporate these into our lives through practices that come from an Eastern influence? I believe so.
Lectio divina is a traditional monastic practice that has four separate steps: read; meditate; pray; contemplate. There's that word "meditate"! Can we meditate on God's word? Yes! Jesus told us that we are to love God with essentially everything in us and every part of us. I think that Christians have a tendency to look at the body in a very separate sort of way and not as a whole. Wholistic thinking or wellness tends to be looked at as a "hippie" thing but the fact is that God created our physical bodies, minds and emotions to work together and whether we realize it or not when one aspect of us is out of order, it affects another.
A few years ago when I started to practice Lectio divina when reading the Bible I really felt like I was learning more and getting more out of it than ever before in my life. I have done yoga off and on over the years but have recently been practicing more and it's another thing that has changed my life. When my body feels looser, stronger and more rooted to the earth I also feel more relaxed and at peace. When I'm more aware of my breathing it is easier for me to calm down in a moment of anger or frustration. Probably what I love most about yoga is that there is an essence of grace to it. We are encouraged to have grace with ourselves and not attempt a position that might not feel good or right. We need to challenge ourselves yet not feel bad or embarrassed if we fail. Through having grace with myself in the practice of yoga I am more capable of extending grace to others.
Namaste means "the light in me honors the light in you". We were created in God's image, we are beautiful and excellent. What could possibly be a better way to "love your neighbor" than to honor the light in them? When we disagree about something, what could be more helpful than to see and honor the goodness in them? Very recently I experienced some pain. I felt like I was being silenced and like I could only share the parts of me that were cute and nice and I had to stifle the parts that are fired up, opinionated and rebellious. I've been on a journey with this but something I've realized is that when I really disagree with someone or what they say maybe I need to pause, breathe, meditate on it for a moment and begin from a place of truly seeing the goodness and light in them before I give in to the urge to attack. I grew up in California and lived another good part of my life in Seattle so moving to Iowa has been hard. It feels like I'm living in a different country in many ways. What I'm learning though is that I can be completely different from most of the people here but that isn't a bad thing necessarily and learning how to coexist with those that are different from you is a VERY GOOD thing and this is something I've been trying to teach our kids as well.
During this time of quarantine due to Covid-19 we have been living in a madhouse. We're figuring out homeschooling, boundaries and discipline and still trying to have fun and do the things that we the parents want to do as well. Most days I feel like I'm straight up losing my mind. More than any other time in my life I have been craving peace and calm and I could not do it without these practices of meditation and yoga. The last thing I mentioned was having a mantra and it's something I just tried out this morning. When I woke up, before I came downstairs to start our day I said a little prayer just asking God to keep me calm and patient today and to show the kids love, which turned into a little mantra of "be calm have patience and love" and I've been repeating it to myself constantly. I'm not saying this day will be perfect by any means but I can say I haven't yelled yet and when the four year old started freaking out for the tenth time, I called her over, grabbed her hands and tried to get her to breathe with me. People I'm going to be real, I've never done that with her before, so clearly something is working.
I wish you peace and love today. Namaste.
Comments
Post a Comment