The Mermaid Chronicles: The Right Way

Upward this mermaid's arm rises,
Right wrist bent, fingers tight-fisted.
In the pool, this mermaid moves.
With bent right wrist, her left-bent elbow lowers,
They break the water's calm.
Through the waterway,
Her forearm rows forward.
Upward her right arm ascends airborne.
Rightly, she aims upward.
Straight to the sky she stretches.
Seeking no splashing,
She strives a straight, uplifted stroke.
Yet, with right wrist bent, and elbow left bent,
All she may do is sway.
Downward her left leaning elbow lowers,
Below the water's top, she skims.
She stirs, and showers surrounding swimmers.
Yet, no mind the gulped water--the blinding showers.
Her firming forearms, beefing biceps, and circling shoulders,
Will triumph.

Spirituality of the Human Body

     Respect.  Body Parts.
     What on earth do these two phrases have in common?  Contrary to what you may think, a great deal.
     But, before I go further, let me establish what I will not be addressing.  First,  respect--respect for life--in its common parlance is beyond my call--abortion.  I have my views.  I respect those of other individuals with differing views than mine.  I am open to expressing, and exchanging those perspectives.  Yet, my call is to convey my thoughts in a different direction.
    Respect for life--respect for the life I have been given to live.  That is my call.  That is what I pray I will voice today.  Yet, that is a broad, unwieldy scope to address.
    Body parts.  Body parts? Yes, body parts.  How is that remotely connected to respect for the life I have been given to live?
     Once again, let me establish what I will not address--what I do not mean.  I do not drive.  I have no knowledge of auto mechanics--I have no knowledge of automobile body parts.  That is not my call.  I am called to a different direction.  I am called to convey my thoughts regarding human body parts.
     Private parts.  Betrayal.  Disability.
     I am not writing about private parts, per se.  The term is understood--there is an established definition of the term.  I do want to include the term in the context of our human body parts.  I have never heard reference to, much less definition of what might be called public parts--public human body parts.
    We have no understanding of how our bodies serve the rest of us--our mind, and spirit.  We do not attend ourselves to how we honor our body parts.  How do we serve our body parts?
     In recent years, I have been called to respond to these questions.  Until recent years, my right hand did little to serve me.  Never have I had, or will I have fine motor skills in my right hand.  Never have I known any other way to live, so that has required little adjustment of me.
    My right ankle, and my left hand are another matter entirely.  Osteoarthritis in my right ankle caused me to ask--how does my ankle serve me?  It took many months for me to reconcile the fact that my right ankle could not serve me.
    My left hand has been my lifelong workhorse.  She has been called to make up for the many times when my right hand could be of no service to me.  I am scared by little.  Yet, the onset of what I now know to be intentional tremors in my left hand rendered me speechless--a feat for anyone who knows me.  Intentional tremors.  The more I intend to do a given task when I am nervous, the shakier my left hand becomes.
    Intentional tremors made essential the honoring of my body parts, and their service to me.  I took for granted that my left hand would be at my service, at full strength, throughout my life to meet whatever need I had.  Intentional tremors called my right arm and hand to service, as a steadying force.
     Intentional tremors were the sign of the first part of spirituality of the body--spirituality of my body.  I had to identify--I had to come to terms with--what my body parts could do.  How could my body parts serve me?  That was the first step.
    Honoring my body parts.  What does that mean?  What does it call me to do?
    When I honor my body parts, I must humble myself.  I must confess, "What is it that my body part can no longer do?  Honoring my body parts, committing myself to confession is not the end.  It is the second of a three-step process that continues throughout our lives as we age.
     We argue about terms regarding people whose bodies do not function as most people's bodies do.  Yet, we have not elevated our understanding to a betrayal of our human body parts to our minds, and  spirituality of the human body--the spirituality of our human body.  The closest example of spirituality of the human body may be found in the writing of theologian Jean Vanier.  If you have never read his writings, I commend him to you.
      But, the writing of Jean Vanier does not go far enough.  Or, how we read Jean Vanier does not  challenge us to examine our own bodies as worthy of having spirituality appended to it.  We can separate his comments and compartmentalize them as applying to the residents of L'Arche, and no one else.  Whenever we receive communion, we speak of the Body of Christ.  Yet, we do not bring our human body to communion with us.
    Clinical inventory of our body parts.  Physicals, medical tests, and other medical examinations require of us little more than to go skin deep.  That is, in and of themselves.  Yet, if we are wholly attuned to our human body parts, we are called to go much deeper--far deeper than skin deep.
    Glorification of the body.  Glorification of the body may be found in two different places--in the media, and in fine art.  Glorification of the body may have positive or negative impacts in the media or in fine art.  Both need our attention--our open-mindedness.
    Spirituality of the human body...spirituality of the human being.
    How can we ascend to--advance to--a spirituality of our body parts--a spirituality of our human body-- if we separate our human body as we enter the door of the church, or if we separate the whole notion of spirituality when we open the door to leave the church?
     Can we read Julian of Norwich and choose to engage in some form of spirituality regarding our human body?  If we accept the invitation Julian of Norwich offers us, can we develop a spirituality of our human being?  I am not saying that it is necessary to go as extreme as Julian did.  That is not the point. .Yet, are we willing to go further than we have  gone up until now?  I continue to press the issue, because I believe it is possible--it is essential.
    Respect. Respect for life.  Respect for the life I have been given to live. How does my body serve me?  How may I honor my body?  How may I serve my body, so as to preserve and honor her gift--her gifts?  Am I willing to commit myself to pursuing a spirituality of my human body--a spirituality of my human being?

Left With Fear

     I fear little.  Not because I am brave, or courageous, not be a long shot.  I fear little.
     Fear's expenditure lessens my deposits of strength to take on necessary human challenges.  My moment's challenges?  They are few.  Preserve my mind's vitality.  Nurture my spirit.  Treat my hand gently.  Preserve the gifts she gives me--the strength I have taken for granted--abused--for a lifetime.
     My vehicle's challenge?  There is but one.  Preserve the strength of my left hand.  Right-handed I am not.  Ambidextrous I am not.  My mind--my spirit--are conveyed through the strength of my left hand.  Friends, family, and a spiritual community revitalize my mind and spirit.  With them, my voice sharpens.
     Exercise might strengthen the hands of some.  Yet, my lifelong abuse of my left hand fertilizes this moment's fear.  Osteorthritis attacks with anxious fear.
     Writing is my voice.  I attend to my ankle--I accommodate her anxiety.  Yet, I fear threats to my left hand's grip--the strength she brings to me.  I must give her due gentleness, that she not be lost to me--to my mind, to my spirit.
     Am I alone in such piercing fear?  I don't think so.  Yet, I cannot say what for others is the unrealized piercing fear that awaits an honest revelation--a revelation that would bring a much more authentic life.  I don't know what my left hand's compromise is--or my compromise to my left hand's honor.  If I did know, I would challenge friends, family, and strangers to be open to their body's revelation--an invitation to authenticity.
     To sleep I go.  Healing--rejuvenation--I seek.

Mature Healing

     Nancy Mairs is an author, a Catholic, an individual with a wheelchair, who is affected by multiple sclerosis.  I was drawn to her writing when I had a voracious appetite to understand my own disabilities--cerebral palsy, and epilepsy.  There is a spirituality of the human body, which is central to how I live the spirituality of The Body of Christ.  It is amazing, it is not a mechanical ritual, nor an esoteric body of knowledge to be studied.
   I gravitate toward Nancy Mairs' writing from a new dimension.  Intellectually, I know she may not telegraph to me--warn me--of the pitfalls I may face, or how to navigate a new chapter in my life--living with the use of a wheelchair.  Yet, the anxious child in me is staying up late to cram for her final exam in living with a wheelchair.  What leads me to think that I will be protected from making mistakes using my wheelchair?  After making mistakes at work, a friend reminded me, "You are not PERFECT Patty, you are human!"
     Yet, news that I should receive my wheelchair within a week or so has accelerated my anticipation.  It is the night before Christmas, and I am waiting for my presents to arrive--I am waiting to open my present.  What is it that Nancy Mairs can tell me that will satisfy me?  I am not married, nor am I a mother, or an individual with multiple sclerosis.  I do not use the word "cripple" to describe the fact that I have cerebral palsy, and epilepsy.  Although, I do understand the feelings that might lead me to change my ways.  Yet, I am not to that point yet.  I do not aspire to using that word in reference to myself.  Nancy Mairs has opened me to the need to be more receptive to the words that I use in describing my cerebral palsy, and epilepsy, and now, my osteoarthitis.  Through her openness, Nancy has encouraged me to be more reflective about such adjectives.
     The return of my voracious appetite for Nancy Mairs, and similar writers, is a sign that I am healing.  My right ankle might be on her last leg, although she has been relieved of her painful bone spurs.  Yet, I am healing.  I am not healing toward a past version of myself--a version with more physical flexibility.  No, that is a false sense of healing.  Mature healing is not movement toward a perfect, god-like way of living.  No.  I have not been granted supernatural--infallible--powers that elevate me from daily struggles.  No.  Mature healing, if I choose to embrace it, calls me to seek accommodation to what I may no longer do.
     During a home evaluation, in which I tried out a wheelchair to see if it would work in my own home, I told the medical vendor that I had three questions to which I needed answers.  When he tried to evade my questions, I made myself quite clear.  First, I needed to know, "what can I do today with this wheelchair?"  Secondly, "with practice, what will I be able to do with this wheelchair?"  Third, "what will I not be able to do--what will I need to ask help in accomplishing when using my wheelchair?"  He was afraid of his answers to my questions.  I was forthright.  "I may not like your answers, but, I need to ask the questions--I need answers, so that I may live as fully as is possible."
     I am anxious.  I want to get started in my quest for answers.  As much as I may want the vendor, or someone else to answer my questions, no one may answer the questions for me.  I have forgotten the willful child, who unwittingly outfoxed the physical therapists.  When given tasks designed to get me to use my left and my right hands, I found a way to accomplish the tasks without using my right hand, which was affected by cerebral palsy.  I was too young to have plotted such rebellion.  I was just willful.  Much has changed, but, I think that willful soul is still resident in me, below my ankle foot orthotic, perhaps?

I've Got to Hand It to You

    Until relatively recently, I have given my left hand little due attention--little credit--for her service to me.  Some were amazed at what I could do with the use of just my left hand--with little to no help from my right hand.  I felt no amazement--I was born this way--never have I had full use of both hands.  So amazement was not worthy of my energy's expense.  My occupational therapists were frustrated, if not angry.  I kept finding ways to do tasks they conceived to be two-handed tasks without calling on my right hand.
     My views toward my left hand have changed since July, 2009.  No longer working--living on long-term disability--I was called to a different view of my left hand.  She was shaky.  No longer was indomitable strength in hand.  Nor was it at arm's reach.
     My left hand still has some strength.  Yet, she has put me on notice.  She will not stand for any further abuse for my ego's sake.  Boxers may fear a right jab.  I fear my left's fist in my face.
     So, do I duck?  No. What do I do?  Wake up.  Look.  Listen.  Feel.  Accommodate.
     Habits are hard to break.  Yet, too much is at stake not to act.  Now.
     I am not alone.  We do not want to admit it, yet, we are aging.  Each of us is called to different accommodations.
     Outstretched hands.  Figuratively, I pray I have outstretched hands that welcome others into my life.  Yet, literally, I need to give care not to try to stretch my fingers so wide that they are strained by going beyond their natural limits.  I recognize when I try to grab too much weight, and in such a way that I compromise the palm of my hand--where my hand and thumb meet.
     I am further along in recognizing that I need to care for my right ankle.  She needs my loving care, so that she does not give out completely.  The temptation to be angry with her is present.  She has failed me.  Yet, will anger bring her strength back to me?  Will resignation to her disintegration make her strong?
     There must be a middle point between anger, and resignation.  The ballerina tries not to fall off her balance beam.  Am I alone on the beam?  Where are you?

Body, Mind, and Spirit

     The juxtaposition of these three words is hardly novel.  Oftentimes, a prescription is offered to achieve balance among the three essences of who we are as human beings.
     I want to offer a different view.  Always,  I have thrived on challenge. But, I do not relish the challenge lunged at me from an aggressor's hands.  I do not savor harsh challenge inflicted in my heart by a marksman's sword.  No, there is a different challenge--a pristine challenge.  I revel in challenge to sharpen my wit. I revel in challenging others to sharpen their wit.
     Today's pristine challenges are marked by questions.  Should you be receptive, I invite you to attend to them.    
     Is body, mind, and balance something you value?  Do you respire enough to aspire to a body, mind, and spirit balance?
     Clearly, a balanced spirit is the offspring of a balance between body and mind.
      Is your body being fed by your mind?  Does your body need a change of your mind's pace?  Is your mind being fed by your body?  Can your body move enough to feed your mind?  Is your body being fed fresh air to stimulate new ideas?
     Do you value body, mind, and spirit balance?  Do you respire deeply enough to aspire to an inspiring life--a life through which your spirit may soar on eagle's wings?
     Just a thought.

A Broken Body's Checklist

    I meet the dichotomy between a temple and a broken body with a history of how I have treated my life during the past 50 years.

    Before I knew to do so with any consciousness, I found strategies to accomplish with one hand the tasks the therapists designed to get me to use, and develop my right hand and arm, which has been affected mildly by cerebral palsy.  My right foot and leg would not be a party to my lifelong defiance.  They limped along bearing who she was without apology.  They did not succumb to the temptation of demanding pretty party shoes.  They did not cave in to the temptations that their head dangled in front of them.

   When told it did not seem I could do a given task, my gut response was, "Do you wanna make a bet?"

   I pushed my body to her limits.  For a lifetime, I resisted anyone who suggested I might lower my physical standards.  To have acted otherwise would have been to admit defeat.  Charlie Sheen is hardly a role model I seek to mimic.  Yet, his words, "Defeat was not an option" rang true.

    I thought that my defiance was paying the highest respect to the temple in which I was given to live.  I had simple obligations to repay--to live up to.  To a mother, who walked out of her first-grader's room to let her dress, knowing that the only way her daughter could ever live independently started with being able to dress herself independently.  Convinced she was right, she left, not to mention needing to escape the struggle before her eyes to be surmounted.  My memory is only etched in my mother's words.  Mom was--she still is--my wellspring of strength.  Seek Mom for strength.  Seek Dad for a breather from independence's demand toward a fuller life.  He was a softy.  He is afraid of my ferocity.

   My gut response--pressing my body mercilessly beyond her limits--was so ingrained in me, that when told that there might be another way to live that my alleviate the stress on my emotions--long-term disability--left me dumb-founded.  Told that I would be qualified for long-term disability with little difficulty, I was stunned.  Relieved.  Yet, the shock of being stunned was such that relief took awhile to take hold.

    How am I answering the question of, "How have I abused my body--pressed her beyond her limits?" I can create a personal checklist to be evaluated by me or others.  

     1. Tried to bear too much weight on my right ankle.

     2. Tried to keep physical pace--walking, running--with other people

     3. Tried to carry too much in my left hand, stretching the limits of my left thumb beyond what is fair, much less healthy to do.

     I am sure that I am missing many items that should be a part of my checklist.  Yet, for now, these three items rule the accommodations I must pursue.  The appointed items to add, and the appointed time to add them will come.  When?  Odd though it may sound, I must listen.  How much weight am I bearing?  What limits does my past experience convey to me?  Am I willing to listen?  Am I willing to pay the price for not listening?

     Am I the only person, who needs to make such a checklist--whose temple must be revered?  Again, it well may be that others do not need to draft such a list, yet, I wonder if it is worthy of consideration.  Is my list the same as anyone else's? No. But, do other people in my life need to respect my list, and not call me to violate it, in order to be in relationship with them?  Yes.

A Temple? A Broken Body?

Or, do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and  that you are not your own?
                                             1 Corinthians 6:19
    I fail miserably as someone who can quote the Bible chapter and verse from cover to cover.  That is not my aspiration, at least not for the sole purpose of making such a claim.  Yet, I do listen each Sunday to the words spoken, and for the messages intended for my ears to hear.  Though the Catholic liturgy revisits the same readings in three-year cycles, I never meet the readings as the same person with the same ears.
    In recent days, two concepts central to being Christian are clashing--calling for some sort of reconciliation that I do not recognize sufficient to utter it.  I must confess, I may be taking the words too literally.  I hope not.  I pray I will be called on it, if I am.  I would rather understand than be right, if those are my choices.  But, I do not want to forgo the blessing of being enlightened because I was afraid of what literal translations call me to do, or how to act.
     What are the two clashing concepts?  Listen.  "...your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God."  Now, the breaking of the Body of Christ, being broken--being willing to be vulnerable to each of one's life moments....that is our call.
     How do "your body is a temple," and "being broken" reconcile?  Am I taking temple and being broken too literally?  Am I trying to make apply to everyone else what I am confronting?  Probably.  Am I mistaken?  Maybe.  Is the question worth asking?  Is the reconciliation between your body is a temple and a broken body possible?  Is it worthy of seeking?

Spirituality of the Human Body

     Today, confronting the need for a scooter, and doing so with surprising acceptance, I am taken back to the deep sense of the spirituality of the human body.  Often we talk about human flesh in condescending terms, if that is the right phrase.  In contrast, many people talk glowingly of the Body of Christ.  
     I may be mistaken in my perception.  I am willing to be told so, or enlightened by a clarifying perspective.
     In no way do I mean to disparage the richness of the Body of Christ.  Quite to the contrary.
     What I do mean is that there is a treasury missed, when we speak of human flesh as the embodiment of our foibles--that behavior and values that we should avoid.  Material excesses are not the sole province of the human flesh.  Nor are material excesses void of any pearls of wisdom.  Not by a long shot.
     As a Christian, I am guided to create a life that embodies the values of Christ--I am invited to be a part of the Body of Christ.  But, does that mean my physical body is to be left behind in the dust?  Is my body just an inanimate, hollow part of my being that is nothing more than a shell to protect something that is more precious?  I don't think so.
    Again and again, my body knocks me on my head, and asks, "Are you listening to me?  How much pain must I inflict upon you, before you open your mind to my voice?  Is it possible that I may be your teacher?  May I be your guide?  Do you get mad at me for not living up to your mind's expectations of what I am supposed to do--what I am supposed to be for you?  Am I here to serve your immediate needs?  Or do I contain any pearls of wisdom that might deepen your understanding and appreciation of the aspects of your life beyond of your human flesh?"
   I am no saint in this regard.  Believe me.  I resist my body's campaign to compromise what I consider to  my God-given right of normalcy.  Can we surrender our resistance.  For me, I know that the harder I resist, the more my body pushes back, and challenges me to redefine my expectations of normalcy. Can we surrender our resistance?
   I never imagined that I might be one of THOSE people, who move through their lives on wheels.  It seemed counter to everything I had been raised to do--everything to which I should aspire.  Slowly--ever slowly--I am moving to what seemed counterintuitive.  In some way, I have been guided to be honest about my fears, gentle with my expectations.  It is essential to redefining what this new way of living is to be.
   Moving toward a different way of living calls me to return to my human body AND to the Body of Christ. To do one without the other will stop a different way of living dead in her tracks.
    I have not figured out the words that aptly describe what this new life will be.  In the terms of my peers, I am retired.  I no longer work in the 9-to-5, 40-hour work week world.  In legal terms, I am on long-term disability.  My human body called the shots there.  She gave me those words.  She challenged--she challenges--me to redefine those labels, or find more fitting words.
   Yet, neither term describes me satisfactorily.  Among my highest values are words--carefully chosen words.  So, I listen.  I listen to my human body--the body I have given to live.  I listen to the Body of Christ.  I ask to be moved toward a new way of living.  Remind me I am a vessel--every ounce of me--and not a carcass to be abused.
    I set out to express myself.  I am never quite sure where I will be taken, or what words might come through my fingers' movements.  Amazing.  Absolutely amazing.