My CrossFit Journey Begins...

When I first heard of CrossFit years ago, I knew at some point I was going to want to try it. I was well into circle-way things by then—Red Tent, Women Writing for (a) Change, Conscious Feminine Leadership Academy—and watched my own trainer, Natalie, get involved with a CrossFit community in Centerville. I benefited from her enthusiasm, her own formation in that community’s ethos and practice. Our workouts became tinged with CrossFit learnings, paced for me in my one or two workouts a week with her. At some point, I said to myself, I want to try that. A loosely organized circle-way, athletic community, aiming for a collaborative ethos that challenges into competition...? Sounded like a balanced feminine-masculine kind of thing, in my ears.

About 18 months ago, I’d guess, I visited a CrossFit in Beavercreek. A morning workout that included burpees and squats, among other things. The warm-up was with a jump-rope, which did not go well for me. I hadn’t jumped with a rope in over thirty years, perhaps forty, and my body did not remember this rhythm. It was frustrating and I felt foolish for not knowing something so elementary. I remember trying to pace myself, slow myself down, but the energies of the group did push me in a way I liked then. My body cried out for probably four days afterward, however, so… Good for me in the end? Not sure. I did realize that there was little chance of me driving that direction several times a week, alongside my work 40 minutes in the other direction, and circle two evenings a week. The coach I spoke to there was nice enough, but I never went back.

Come more into the present, and I’m finishing up a coaching call, August 1^st, maybe. A Wednesday. In conversation with her, I awoke once again to how I’d become motionless, stuck in the energy flows of those around me, unable to choose what might be for me, for me alone. This is an ancient pattern for me, unclear origins, but one I’ve redressed again and again in my nearly fifty years. I felt foolish to have been swept up into it again, though I know the pattern always serves its purpose in the end. I hung up the phone, got out a Julia Cameron book, did morning pages, and made a list of things I’d wanted to try but hadn’t started yet. I researched a number of CrossFit communities in the Dayton area and chose one close to my work on campus. I scheduled myself to come to the Community Open Workout that Saturday, and dove in. Amidst two intensive commitments that month—teaching a week on campus and a retreat with 17 other women—I scheduled the intro sessions with Matt, one of the coaches, and last week, my first week of ‘regular workout classes’ began.

The timing of this feels significant to me somehow. I turn fifty this next March, which doesn’t feel a big deal to me but is to many human beings around me. I’ve loved every birthday these last 10-15 years, enjoying the climb up the numbers without a sense of forboding many women feel. My anam cara soul-sister, Lisa, is facing double-hip surgery this fall, a journey of hers that has yet impacted me greatly. I began to go a little tharn, truth be told, as this journey unfolded for her. I grew still inside, not wanting to startle the wildlife in her, facing down something that feels (and is) a pretty big deal. I began to know a deep gratitude for my morning walks with Nala, aware of my body’s capabilities as distinctive, unique, my own. I began to know a deep sadness too, a belly fear, about what needed to happen for her own health to be restored. I wanted her body journey to be easy, relieved…and it’s been painful and limiting. I probably felt a little guilty too, being able to move in my body in ways unavailable to her. Illogical, I know, but plausible in how I feel connected, my body to hers.

Unsure and incapable of easing her own body’s journey, of connecting in like we often have, I turned my full attentions to CrossFit and the invitations there. Might as well, I figured. Fear I could face. Fear that was my own. And greater movement, greater intensity workouts, greater energy output…all felt invited and welcome.

CrossFit Dedication, the community I’ve now joined, is a family-friendly place that’s been around for five years now. They just celebrated their Five Year Anniversary with a party August 25^th. I was on retreat with my circle of women, so could not join in. They seem to offer challenges for those seeking to enter competition-level CrossFit and create a space for folks like me who simply want to workout more, with like-minded folks, creating support and structures for more healthy living.  Matt handles more of the intake and business responsibilities, so I have worked with him the most, just to join. I attended the 8 a.m. class that his wife, Melissa, coaches this past week. It’s a smaller class, so the coaching is more personalized. I really appreciated her style and attentiveness to my own form and process.

For now, I think my invitation is to try different classes, to get a whiff of what each feels like—time of day, number of people, walks of life, etc.—and tend to my own body’s language as I deepen my capacities. The first fruit, just from the month so far, is that movement is fun again. And fear is less present, as I move in the flow of a circuit workout or a slated set of exercises in rounds of repetition. I look forward to going, and I’m tickled to be diving into something that called to me years ago.

The Dance of Gauze & Gaze

I feel wrapped in gauze, looking through clouds at everyone and all who tries to peer inside. The Marley-shaped hole in my heart is an obvious focus of grief, loss in the felt-sense of who I am, but I suspect the relinquishing of CFLA, the transition from a full, rich summer into the institutional-rhythms of fall, is underneath all of this too. I feel far away from myself, or others feel far away from me. There is a certain gloomy comfort that comes with this feeling. Anything that might come close to touch me cannot…which means I won’t feel the loss of it/her/them afterwards. A plausible defense mechanism, if not who I am, at root.

The stories I tell from this feeling are old ones, and not necessarily true to my realities today (unless I cannot find a way out of the gauze, I suppose). I have hesitated to even give these stories/strands voice, hesitated to write for days, because I know they are the old strains, the old whiffs of story that held me at bay for so long. I’m weary of these stories, and wish them gone. They have been in these days the domineering strands of my thoughts, however, even though I attempt to resist them each step of the way.These are not the dominant melodies of my life today. So why DO they return?

Perhaps it is worthwhile seeing them on the page after all, to release them to be seen, to befriend them once again. Can I just say, though: I am SO weary of befriending them. J

A familiar one, from nearly four years ago…being left behind, losing, being lost. Lis and I are both in the busy start-up season that autumn brings. Church, seminary, Ignatian Retreat in Daily Life, circles, family, more…each bringing its abundance as well as its energetic heaviness inside. Her husband’s church calls her into certain exchanges, interactions, as does mine. Each of these Invitations are specific to her, to me, but they DO come also with the energetic strands connected to a husband’s calling. The celebration I note in this season of flurried start-up is that fears that were SO huge years ago hardly flutter within me. They DO flutter, I can still tell, but almost as residuals: fears of being left behind, of always being second choice to the church (or something else), of losing, being lost. These flutter within me, occasionally flaring into full-blown fear, but mostly quietly fluttering. 

[First full-blown flare, Saturday after Week Two CFLA ended, Megan and Lis down by the river. Second full-blown flare, a week ago Friday when no spaces opened for even a short voice touch. The voices said: She’s lost herself; she is out of reach, cannot be reached, does not want to be reached. You are no longer necessary or desired in her life.] I cringe to see the words on the page, because I KNOW they are not true. I yearn for quiet spaces, as does she. I need to be in my own rhythms, once I find them again that is J, as does she. I yearn for my relationship with Brian to be its own private abundance, as does she with Chris. These are what I KNOW. And yet seeing and sensing the rise of family energies, the images of husband and grandchildren rise over her own self, her own wild self, the voices in me rise, sending my energies into a swirling hot mess. ‘Her time of individuation is over. She doesn’t want the tumultuous adventure of river-kayaking-worms-digging anymore. She doesn’t want to draw close to that Flame anymore. My presence in her life is fading, or needs to fade, or...' These words then ‘have me’ until I’m worn out, decide I won’t care anymore, attempt to release all attachment…

And then devotion and awareness of Lisa-Lisa rises in Her time, and I rest, I remember, I know who I am inside of me and inside of her again, trusting Lisa to do what she needs and desires for herself, weaving me in as is holy and fitting and wise. My spirit-selkie-skin remains tender, stretched and pulled by my own sensations of loss, of fear, yet it is also moistened and strengthened to remember, be Reminded. Everything needs to flow in its own rhythms, nothing can be grasped or held onto or it will die. Everything I need is right here for... words that rise in my awareness from within, not as a pushing-away from her... They really are true words...when my selkie skin is strong enough to hold all of me.

The stories around Brian are not as activated as the ones with Lisa. I fear it is because the gauze has been around us for much longer, and we’ve gotten used to it by now. But our rhythms are gentle with one another, and attentive. Honoring (for the most part) what each needs to do to grieve the loss of ‘our girl.’ My dive into the Whole30 has been a huge relief for me, if a sense of irritation for him. Fascinating to see the ripples of this simple choice become so huge in our ‘us.’ My inability to emotionally-eat, for instance—or at least much less of it than ever before—mirrors to him his own reliance on food for emotional comfort. I feel a sense of loss, a being-useless around him, as he looks to food instead of to being present with me, in his own pain. But he’s resisted holding his own deep feeling, just as I have…do…which means the food holds it instead of my having to hold it.  For now, that IS better than my holding his pain FOR him. We’ve not really learned how to each be with our own new selves (these last few years), vulnerably, in the presence of the other, without expectation that the other ‘should carry our pain’ or such an encounter ‘should be’ something in his mind or in my own. Being present with what-is has never been our inheritance, after all, though we may be eventually invited into its depths, sometime down the road. Maybe this is what we could learn now, if we stick with it, without a dog, for a while. Or maybe not…maybe a new dog would invite us into a sense of ease, to learn this new vulnerability with one another gently. Perhaps he will need this new dog to stay with his emotional self... I wonder...

The stories I would often tell myself here are mostly quiet. I don’t get triggered when Brian has to rush over to church for something like he did last night, or disappears into his cave for whatever reason. I trust he will come out when he’s ready, and I lean into the quiet that is afforded me. Unless voices about someone or something else rush in…but for the most part, I’ve learned to keep my balance amidst the energetic needs of his congregation, his job. The HUGE gift of this change can almost not be overstated. Huzzah to my Shalem journey, huzzah to Spirit’s tenacity with me, Amma’s nurturing rhythms of touch and care.

So the gauze is whatever it is, I suppose… I yearn for the spacious gifts of the Gaze, a re-opening of my tender self into the holy flow, the Oneness I’ve/we’ve been Given to know. But I yearn for it without ‘nicking’ the raw sense of loss I know and feel now. I yearn to touch and be touched, yet without ‘nicking’ the raw sense of loss I know and feel now. I yearn for the creative drive in which I feel I can give into the world, yet this raw sense of loss I know and feel now holds me at bay. It feels like this crying, whimpering part of me that cannot be left behind, yet cannot also be fully present with those I love. This tender part of me that yearns to be seen, still without getting seen. This tender part of me hoping not to be ‘nicked’ somehow, being reminded how deeply Love roots within us when we allow Her to AND how deep the hole is when a beloved leaves her body…is no longer able to be touched, held, kissed…no longer able to touch, hold, kiss me. This tender part of me feels like this image I will forever carry—Marley falling asleep, still trying to lick our hands, yet getting so sleepy…reaching out even as she was leaving…  I have been introduced to this part of me that simply desires to leave with her, to not feel this loss and separation, to finally leave behind me this being left-behind, this losing…

And yet I know an incredible life of abundance here, calling, yearning for me too…

to love deeply

to birth, nourish and nurture

to release, encourage and cheer onward

to celebrate, mourn, cherish

to re-enter the Flow with my beloveds

to create with my anam cara, in the Flow we’ve been Given

she and I, Lisa-Lisa, the mystery of double-goddess power

in One, for the world

to re-enter all of it, in my time, when time…

which will be…

the moment when it comes, again and again…

What IS it about Princeton...?

Events in my life have returned a recurring question to me from multiple quarters: What is it about Princeton that affects you so? 

I have struggled mightily for years to have a compelling and convincing answer to this question. It’s a trope by now in my family that I have a highly cathected relationship with Princeton Theological Seminary. I can understand their familiarity and weariness with it, given my 10- or even now 20-year journey to move from 

• attachment (ego-grasping of established success in higher education and professional endeavors, with doors opening because of association with the name-education of Princeton) and then 
• aversion (fair critiques against the ironies and paradoxes of such a place, i.e. a place to train Christian ministers to be disciples of a Jewish carpenter whose life/ministry bears little resemblance to the values of Ivy-League privileged education) 
• into the wisdom of non-attachment, gratitude and relinquishment, even forbearance. 

It has surely been a journey of forbearance for these, my intimates, as the energies of this question have worked their way through my mind, my body, my spirit. And with what result or product? After all these years, I still struggle to offer a compelling and persuasive answer to this question, What is it about Princeton that affects you so? It has been a journey with seemingly no resolution, a cycle of discourse or conversation in which they are now bound as well. For that, I do feel regret. For that, I feel sadness at being continuously unheard, unseen, both for my inability to articulate/persuade and our shared captivity to such distracting energies for what is life-giving in this world.

It dawns on me this morning that perhaps the issue lies in the question. Perhaps it’s not the right question to be asking. Just maybe, the question needs to be “Why aren’t more of us within ecclesial Christian traditions befuddled, frustrated, irritated, even enraged by an institution like Princeton Theological Seminary?” Why aren’t you bothered by institutions of higher (theological) education rife with such debilitating and damning paradoxes? If I/we were to try to answer that question, how would we proceed? I have been feeling my way back into some of these energies, not at my instigation but at the impetus of bemusing providence. 

The tendrils of Princeton's gift and burden in my own journey began back in 1992, when I had opportunity to visit the campus in a "Prospective Student" weekend. One could argue they began earlier in my Midwestern upbringing--folks in the Midwest have huge respect, even awe, for ivy-league institutions, almost without any awareness of them as they are. I matriculated for the Masters of Divinity degree in 1993, completed it in 1996. I was accepted into the doctoral program there in 1996, so pursued the PhD in practical theology, completing it in 2001. In the midst of that, I got married to my first love from college days, who then came to Princeton to do his Masters of Divinity degree. He finished in 2003, but we both stayed on one more year--I, to get a Lilly Endowment grant off the ground; he to serve as interim-chaplain at the Westminster Foundation at Princeton University. We were finally granted 'reprieve' in summer 2004 as I entered into seminary teaching and he entered his first installed call as a pastor of a local church. Eleven years' of Princeton Seminary (de)formation in overwhelming privilege, beautiful-souled people, 'establishment' and the version of 'community' that comes with incredible wealth, privilege, and high literacy/intellect. 

These next ten years have been spent in an environment of great felt-contrast, though still incredible privilege, beautiful-souled people, and the paradoxical challenges of community in the 'community' of higher theological education. Christian koinonia and institutional decline & grief are impossible bed-mates--economics and competition are interwoven irreparably into the relational yearnings of consumerist, implicitly 'class-oriented' human beings. Rarely are people seen, truly seen. Rarely are their voices heard, truly heard or invited. Structure and form dominate how human beings interact and even conceive of what they want, who they are in themselves. Given these things, I have spent these ten years doing the hard work of differentiation from Princeton Seminary and its establishment, institutional, high-privilege, class-conscious way of living into Christian discipleship. I have strived to express my heart-felt gratitude and receptivity to all the gifts my years at Princeton offered me, without question or condition. I could not do what I do today without my years there. I have also strived to release my own ego-attachment to the things Princeton instills as values, success, achievement. To release the yearnings for outward success, larger public affirmation of my work, signs of 'proof' that what I do matters to those within the hallowed halls of my (ironically stated) alma mater. And, as the journey of awakening has unfolded, I have also struggled to relinquish the aversion and anger, the sense of betrayal of my holiest yearnings that were woven into institutional and intellectual matters with little connection to the radical claims of compassionate living. The Buddhists are right, after all--aversion is the negative/shadow side of attachment. To have deep aversion is simply the reactive form of a remaining attachment. And I was making really good progress on that front. No longer yearning for what Princeton is perceived to offer, no longer angry or reactive to its way in the world, I was able to say with equanimity that I was thankful for being there and thankful for my journey to have taken me here. End of story.

Until my cousin's husband became the seminary's next president. The Seminary freakin' married into my family. Plopped back into the swirls of privilege, political back-talking, supposed strivings to be seen within the Princeton family once again, I watched as my soul's energies went through their paces once again. Attachment to the ease of being-invited into high-privilege places. Anger at how blind the 'community' is to the larger world and what 'reality' means to the 99%. Well-seasoned recognition of folks connecting with me not because of who I am but because of who I know, love, as my family. All of it arose again, until it eased in practice, in welcome, in acceptance of simply what-is. 

The ten years of practice shaped the days of awareness leading up to and completing the Inauguration Day festivities with a sense of peace and relinquishment. Yes, I had really done the work. Yes, life is funny in how it brings things into your life so as to give opportunity once again to practice, even to see how far you have come. And yes, the question is no longer the right question for me: What is it about Princeton that affects you so? The secondary question, the one that arose this time, Why are not more of us irritated, befuddled...? The further I travel along my way, with spirit-friends and heart-companions, more of us are not irritated, befuddled, etc. because none of all that really matters to this 'more' of us. None of that bears resemblance to the world that does beckon, that does yearn for our gifts. There are so many mysterious, beautiful, and challenging things welcoming this 'more' of us into the world that little time or energy is left for the story that had shaped so much of my own awareness, spirit, for so long.

It is my story, and it will always be with me. I will continue to learn from it and awaken to the things that drew me into the gift and burden of Princeton. I will continue to offer gratitude for all that has been made possible because my story is as it is. And I will continue to smile and breathe into the reality of what-is within Princeton's bounds, accepting the paradoxes so plentiful within them. All those who are drawn to those bounds can have a listening-heart companion in me, if they so choose. Sacred Mother can now do with this journey whate'er She may, as I offer it to holy purpose. Wait and watch. God alone. Blessed be.

Never lose sight of Him. Promise me.

These words returned to me yesterday, as I completed the first story-arc of a writing that happened to me this month, all 38 single-spaced pages. The words were spoken in my imagination, in the voice of Ed, an impish Irish mystic, recovered alcoholic, and Hospice patient I visited four times in the autumn of 1998. In the period of one month, I fell in love with him, in his crusty devotion, with his wife and family, with the Jesus he knew and trusted so very well. The journal came back into my life 14 years after I had begun it. By then, I was a weary theological professor reading my own words about these visits, this gentle Irish soul, not remembering the details of any of it.

I had grieved his death so very much, so very hard, unable to imagine that visiting with him four times could have such an overwhelming impact on my entire being, my life and sense of calling. When I perused the journal, the March morning in 2012, before my first writing class at Women Writing for (a) Change, I found my handwriting and words so very foreign. Who had I been then? What was I writing about? I had forgotten I had started this journal of “the communion of saints” in my life, Ed being the first one to receive journal-writing attention. The only one, really, though I began another entry upon the conclusion of work with my supervisor, Paula Jeanne Teague. That entry still had the fingerprints of Ed, however, so the journal was really only about this overwhelming entrance of an Irish soul into my own soul.

My then-counselor, Nancy, must have invited me to write Ed a letter of good-bye, for the final entry about him in that journal. She seemed to think I was “holding onto the dead,” and needed to let him go in some ritual fashion. She was probably right. At the very least, her invitation gave me the gift of this journal entry, November 19, 1998. This gift of these words in my own hand, from my deepest Self, unknown to me in full then, but for a glimpse. Never lose sight of Him. Promise me. Ed/I was urging me to never lose sight of Jesus, to promise M/myself I would never relinquish him. And today, I return to a deeply embodied awareness that that promise has been kept, if not by me alone. I have kept it, but I have also been held every step of the way to be kept as well.

Such is the reality of faith for any human soul. We never do what we can do, become who we fully are, alone. It may feel like it, many times, of course, but I guess I’m writing here to say to whomever will listen, ultimately, we are never alone. Ever. As long as there is energy coursing in our biological being, it connects us soul and body to all living things. Mind and spirit may require shaping, practice, training to connect in awareness or consciousness to others, but in soul and body, we are never alone. In my own faith tradition’s language, He is Risen.

Oddly, I learned how to step back into this wisdom in a triumvirate of two rabbis and a spiritual doula. A woman came into my life, in God’s impeccable timing, much like a comet streaks across the sky, with brilliant stars. The signposts were so clearly of abundant Intent, or the breadcrumbs so very obvious to a body-soul finally trained to taste and see. I called her my spiritual doula, to get the S.D. into our correspondence and shared awareness. She’s right to resist formalization of these things of Spirit with some-such title like “spiritual director”; I’m right to honor her and her overwhelming, gracious gift to me, to this holy work in the world, with a little bit of an impish title. And now we both know the need in her that met the need in me, two companions called together along this way, for whatever else God will shape in us in the time to come.

The writing that happened returned me to the words of a ‘crazy rabbi friend’ as well, when I wrote him a brief note on Easter 2008. I had awoken to the image of his face, along with that of a lama Garchen Rinpoche, with no idea what “He is Risen” meant anymore. The dream suggested I was to ask them, that they would know. Irwin graced me with a thoughtful, impassioned Teaching, wrestling with this unknowing moment alongside me, within me. In his words, he returned me "to the sheer force of Jesus."

And then just last week, five years after that Easter 2008, I sat in table fellowship with another rabbi-friend, just as crazy but in his own gentling, self-effacing way. We were discussing our upcoming trip to Israel together in which we would share leadership with three others, for a group of 34 students. I confessed my skepticism that this trip to “the land where Jesus walked” would have such Jesus-connotations for me. “I’ve never had this burning desire to walk where Jesus walked,” I said. “I’ve not had much access to Jesus or God language for a long time, actually, which is not to say I’m not devoted to God in Jesus.  I’ve just seen and now sensed in my body such woundedness at the intersections, the peripheries with others, other traditions. I’ve not had a physical need for this pilgrimage-to-Holy-Land thing. So much violence in the name of Jesus,” I concluded. My friend’s face clouded over a bit, seeming sad. “But your tradition has offered such good too. You can’t let it go,” he said. Pleaded, even. I was startled, and something in me shifted. “Well, you’re probably right,” I confessed. “Way seems to be opening for me to say Jesus’ name again with a sense that it actually connects to Someone real.” We raised our shotglasses and had another cracker with lox, leaving it at that.

Never lose sight of Him. Promise me. These words brought such tears to my eyes yesterday. In my travels and covenantal immersion with so many companions, rooted in so many different traditions—or none at all—had I lost sight of my Teacher, my Beloved, Jesus? This one we in the church call the Anointed? The Messiah? True to form, for me, yes and no. J 

One of my “go-to” scriptural stories/texts has always been that of the Emmaus Road, Luke 24. Not only did it undergird the work of my theological mentor, James Loder, but it has structured my understanding of seeing Jesus--and losing sight of him--on the risked roads of a living faith tradition. Loder mirrored for the world a “transformational logic” that rests within this story-text. I have always experienced it as Jesus’ way of making himself known, seen, and then unseen, until he returns to stand among them, you, us, again. Returning to the text, I’m amused to see that the two disciples ran from Emmaus back to Jerusalem, and Jesus returns to them there, saying “Peace be with you.” So I could say this text mirrors Jesus’ way of making himself known, seen, and then unseen, “until we are all together in Jerusalem.” Perhaps this is becoming a pilgrimage story after all.

But this way of understanding Jesus’ way in the text, in my own life, means that I lose sight of him all the time, when he vanishes to go to the next place “on the way.” I’ve learned to trust that I will find him again, or be found, as it may be more accurate to say. But I lose sight of Jesus all the time AND I’ve never lost sight of him. It seems impossible for me to do so, actually. The woman who used to be my spiritual director has often quipped to me, “Always the Bride, never the bridesmaid,” which makes me shy and a bit bashful, though seen and held. In moments of deepest, belly-fear, I lament and grieve my loss of him, this sense that I cannot address Jesus directly anymore, that I don’t feel him like I used to, that he’s not really there. And I understand when others, outsiders, bring languages of psychology and other-traditional language to talk about "the experience of Jesus in human minds, consciousness, awareness." That this "rising" of Jesus in Christian tradition is a psychological-cosmic evolution thing. I get that, but it's not the language for me. There's this seemingly un-rootable both/and conviction of awareness-evolution AND historical-physical reality of resurrection in my mind, my body, my blood, my bones. Apparently, I can't be or believe otherwise, even when I try, when I grieve, when I lament such clear absence. Just when I’ve about mustered all I know how, He is Risen. He comes back in such clarity, such Voice, such unabashed hold on me that I get shy and bashful all over again. A blushing Bride, my friend would say. 

And my dream of long ago? That fidelity to Jesus needs to begin to include the discernment with others like a lama and a rabbi, sings its truths all over again. Faith in the future will not be like faith in the past. It’s never been that way and it still is not. Faith in the future requires the mirroring of fidelity from outsiders of every tradition, deeply rooted in their own. Discovered again and again, on resisted pilgrimages, in the messiness of the mundane that is so incredibly extraordinary we mostly miss seeing it. Seeing each other. And for me, seeing Him. 

Or Her, as I know Her most these days. I don’t think Jesus would mind being seen in drag.

So, next year, Jerusalem.