Nekkid Resurrection

As I fumbled to get from my car to my office this morning I counted seven bags in my backseat.  I rifled through or over yoga gear; two overnight bags (one left over from last weekend, one from last night); two different messenger bags I’d brought into work on two different days last week; my murse (man purse — “european shoulder bag”, “Indiana Jones carried one”, insert other pop culture reference here…); and a grocery bag with a chalice, paten, candle, and half a bottle of grape juice.

This is my life at the moment.  Once again I have transformed my back seat into my mobile locker room/office.  Somewhere between family visits that take me out of town, my teaching gig at Duke, the somewhat awkward and paradoxical attempt towards a healthier marriage that has taken the shape of my moving into a loft 30 miles down the road, I seek snippets of balance in yoga, dance, ritual, and prayer.  I spent a large part of Saturday in bed, eating cold pizza and finally giving myself space to watch season six of Lost.  Thankfully, a couple of emails and a dinner invitation pulled me back into the world before a morning off turned into wallowing in a pit of melancholy.

Honestly, I’m not feeling the tug of melancholy that I’ve known at other points, but I know I am resurrecting an old pattern.  When things get tough, I get busy.  I am a master at keeping the schedule packed so I don’t have to do the hard work of stillness.  I can thrust through a day, and even thrust through my very carefully planned spiritual practices, check them off the to do list and keep going.  Everything on the list seems so worthwhile — the opportunities too good to pass by — until I’m dropping balls, snippy with the folks closest to me, and just generally out of sorts.

So this is my confession.  Had my partner not claimed Sabbath for himself on Saturday (which irritated the snot out of me because I wanted his time and attention); had my closest local friends not been out of town or busy; had my back not been aching so much that it was hard to get out of bed; I wouldn’t have sat still all weekend.  I might not have noticed that there were seven different bags in my back seat this morning as a I came into work — and that I’m doing that thing I do again.

Granted, I’m not the bull in a china shop that I once was.  Even in my spread-thin places, I at least know where the ground is even if I lose sight of it from time to time.  But still, I find myself moving faster than planned then slamming on the brakes rather than an easy flow of movement and stillness.

That, and I have too many bags.