Your Body Has Been Faithful to Live...

So, to continue with the break of my silence...

Tonight I found myself listening to Matthew Sanford and Krista Tippett speaking about the connection between our minds and our bodies on the MPR show, Speaking of Faith. This is going to take me somewhere for awhile. I can taste the future in this connection, I am anticipating things opening, shifting, breathing in an anciently new way.

Matthew has written a book called, "Waking: A Memoir of Trauma and Transcendence". I have not been paralyzed as he has been, but parts of me have... parts that maybe can't be mapped physically. He talks about learning to listen to the silence inside... to spaces that we can't hear within ourselves. The peace and grace of his speech, the obvious breaking through suffering to be able to bless where before were curses... I am hungry for that.

He has such affection and grace for the body... where my past has been to curse my body and want to be out of it... and I am just waking up, myself, to how much harm that has done.

He talked of grace. He talked of healing stories. He talked of how our bodies do not fail us, they are incredibly faithful to live for us. In those times when we lose consciousness or disaccociate (to survive!) our bodies keep us alive and they store the impressions/memories of what is happening without us. Alone.

That is what I am tasting that is new from hearing this interview. I am tasting my body's "aloneness" and I am sad. I am sorry.

I am in a time of going back. I am in a time of learning to listen to my body and to learn to cherish it, grieve for it and befriend it. I can feel, even from listening to this interview, gratefulness for my body.

It is similar to how I was startled to find that when I got my hearing aides, instead of feeling clunky or awkward or ashamed (basically to feel them as enemy or separate from me), they felt to me like two intimate friends who were completely there to help me... I can not believe how "accomodating" (thanks to technology) they are! I am able to work with a woman at the hearing aid office and she programs them to suit me and my needs. If they are too "sensitive" (they adjust noise too often) then she can make them less so... they automatically sense if there is a lot of background noise and they "compress" the noise from the back and focus on the noise in front of me... lots of things like that. It is truely amazing.

I am hungry to read Matthew's book.