Seasons and Cycles (1)

Our lives are marked by seasons and cycles, ebbs and flows and pendulum swings. Even our progressions are circular, spiraling around a line.

In August the earth hurtles toward equinox, the equanimity of darkness and light. The planet has traveled enough in its orbit that the mornings are laden with dimness and dew. The birds, triggered by the glimmering of dawn, are at this time of year in the midst of their singing during my morning prayers. When I get up, the world is still heavy with dark, heavy in the half-light of dawn. When I drive to work, I need the visor to shield my eyes from the risen sun.

The earth keeps spinning on its axis, the moon continues to orbit the earth, and these two, together with the other planets and the bodies within their influence, go on wheeling around the sun, the fixed point in all of this movement.

On September 1st, the church year begins, the cycle of feasts and fasts. On the eighth, we celebrate the Feast of the Nativity of Mary, the Mother of God.

(to be continued)

The Possibility of Wholeness

Finally the sun is beginning to lose its grip. No longer does it grope through the heavy curtains in our room, waking me before I have to get up; no longer does it juice my brain so late in the day I can’t get to sleep at a reasonable hour. I can feel we’re on the approach to equilibrium, the promise of decent rest.

Today, the first Saturday in August, I woke up feeling I’d had a good night’s sleep. When I walked to the road to pick up the newspaper, the sky already was the clearest blue, dotted with white clouds. All day long the air was perfect—hot but balmy, without a hint of humidity. All day long the sun gave off the purest light.

Something about this light is indescribable—how richly it draws out the colors of the trees and the grass and the sky, how sharply it defines everything, yet lacks harshness. The world seems transfigured by it, infused with rightness, suffused with the presence of Uncreated Light.

I felt right today—rested, relaxed. I had no pressing obligations, no stress. I soaked in the scenery on my drive to and from the rink, basking in the light. My legs felt limber when I skated my rest-day laps. Later, I got some writing done. I had a good conversation with my wife.

Days like today are rare—just the right amounts of rest and activity and light to lube the brain, just enough exertion to keep the body loose.

Days like today lead me to believe in the possibility of wholeness.

Being in a Body

I love being in a body.

I love that we can perceive and appreciate beauty in the world. I love that we can enjoy what sustains us—the color and texture and savor of food. I love the intimacy of touch—an embrace, the heft of a sleeping baby, a pat on the back, caresses. I love the sound of the human voice singing, the sound of my children calling my name. I love the air’s buoyancy on a mild summer evening, its lushness after rain, its sharpness in my nose and lungs in the dead of winter. I love the beauty of an athlete’s body, the form of a beautiful woman. I love that beauty can be found in any form.

Bodies are capable of great betrayal. I saw a film about a man whose skin fell off at the slightest touch. All of his thirty-six years, most of his body was covered with blisters and open sores. To say that his life was filled with pain and suffering is a gross understatement. I read about a man whose life and career as a brilliant mathematician were destroyed by schizophrenia. He thought he saw patterns and hidden messages in newspaper articles. He saw people who didn’t exist. Late in his life something changed in his brain and he learned to cope with his illusions by ignoring them. I saw a show about a man whose tumors engulfed his face. He couldn’t see out of one eye. His voice was muffled, indistinct. He had to move masses of flesh away from his mouth in order to eat. He wasn’t what you’d call a social butterfly.

The Man Whose Skin Fell Off. A Beautiful Mind. The Man with No Face. The misery of some people’s lives because of their bodies is beyond comprehension.

I am amazed by the body’s intricate systems, the mysteries of the brain. I love that the brain works associatively as well as linearly. I love that the body can heal itself.

Some bodies age beyond their years, dying before their brains can mature.

I love those moments of consciousness between sleep and wakefulness, before the concerns of the day barge in. I love the feeling, when I get it, of having had a good night’s sleep.

Some brains never mature, foundering in the wake of their bodies.

I love the mild mania of a sunny afternoon, the calm of a rainy day.

Defect, disease, cancer, paralysis, death. Imbalance, disorder, psychosis, seizure, coma.

I’m lucky enough to be reasonably whole, burdened only by lesser forms of sleep and mood disorders. Though I rarely feel well rested, I’m relatively comfortable in my discomfort, damaged but functioning.

I love the sensation of human-generated speed, as on a bicycle or in skates. I love to sweat, to breathe deeply and hard, reveling in the power in my legs, pleased with the wind on my skin, the wind’s dull roaring in my ears. I love to be good at moving. I even love the pain of intense activity, sprinting through the burning in my legs, fighting to catch my breath on my hands and knees afterward.

More than anything else, I love the warmth and ease of muscles after exercise, the lush feeling of quiet that floods my body when I’ve showered and settle down to daydream and to rest. I love the euphoric wash of chemicals in my brain, the feeling of having been healed, cleansed.

I want never to be without a body. I dread getting old, slowly losing the ability to do things as well as I could, finally unable to do them at all. I hope with all of my being that the new bodies we’re promised in the afterlife are the bodies we’re in now, only healthy, whole, incorruptible, forever in the prime of life.