Short Step

Today is Day Two of the spring celebration of the festival Navaratri, nine nights of the goddess.  It’s mostly a celebration of the goddess Durga, whose name comes from the Sanskrit for ‘hard’ or ‘difficult’.  (Look at that hair in the picture of her in the 1 o'clock position!)  She’s the promise that resides in all of us that we can be more, but it’s going to be rough going.  On this very Day Two in my back yard, we’ve had just enough sunshine and just enough rain to get my tulip blooms out. 

They’ve been waiting since their last bloom, since I last folded their leaves down, through the heat of a mosquitoed summer, through the fall Navaratri, through the bare winter, creating and storing in their bulbs the potency and potential of their short-lived blooms that will show in the next few days.  At the height of their beauty, they’ll be visited by the bees, and then it will be a short step from the bloomed tulip to a bare stem and exposed stamens and stigmas.  She will have put on her best outfit, only for it all to come off again, to be undone by her own beauty.  For the sake of getting to do it again, of reinvention, of fertilization, to make something more than was there before. 

Every time the weather changes, I vow (vrata) to step up my fashion and beauty game.  Yes, it is a sacred vow and worthy of the Sanskrit word.  So many women must feel the same way, as the fashion weeks and 5-pound issues of Vogue arrive in late February and August.  These are the times of the year when it’s easy for life to feel hard (dukha).  You’re either really cold and miserable and over it or you’re really hot and sweaty and need some relief.  So, that first sunshiney day of about 75 degrees is cause for celebration.  We even have an Argentinian friend who looks forward to El Dia de Pezon, the spring day when ladies throw off their scarves and jackets and run around with just a couple of flimsy layers on their top parts.  They are dressed perfectly in their nakedness. 

Navaratri’s goddess celebration, for me, commemorates a period of time when life shifts from feeling tough to feeling like a girl has options, that she might choose to adorn herself and present herself in her best light.  Maybe she’s a little more colorful, maybe a little more studious, but she looks and feels more refined.  No sooner do I get my nails and hair done and my lips painted on that there will be packages to open and wind blowing and the eating of lipstick (insert commercial for lip stuff made from ingredients that you wouldn’t mind actually eating).  This isn’t about trying to stay perfect all the time, but rather about recognizing that lying barely underneath what looks like the most beautiful and refined version of something is that very thing’s hardship, its effort, its edginess and vices. 

You see, it’s a short step from a yoga teacher who looks strong and like she has it all together to a girl with an eating disorder who was doing nothing more enlightened than looking for more time at the gym.  It’s a short step from a sensitive, giving friend to the scared person who wants to control those around her so that they don’t leave.  A short step from loyalty and protection to being a holding tank for resentment.  From our most outwardly presentable selves to our most primal natures, those techniques that have preserved our survival on the most raw level. 

These nights of the goddess invite me to compassion – for myself, for my friends, and for my family.  They invite me to plant the very seeds that were saved from the most fertile experiences in the last growing period, filling me with hope for something that has not yet been and dread of all the work it will take to get there.  Most of all, thought, they excite me to revel in the gorgeousness, knowing that it is already being eaten by time. 

Fearlessness

 

I’ve been spending some time at my grandmother’s house, along with my four-year-old and my uncle, who also lives there on the farm. During our stay, my son turned four, which is a really fun age for all the family. He’s playing superheroes all the time, especially Spiderman, and he and his great-uncle put up shields to protect themselves when they are fighting off bad guys. He's learning about being strong, about being brave, and even about being feared.  My son asks about these things, and I think about how to answer him in a way that he can understand and still carries the weight of what more there is to know about fear and courage.

While in Western Kentucky, I was excited and honored to teach a workshop in my home county at the yoga studio on the town square.  It's owned and run by a mother and daughter team, and it has been super-fun to get to go to classes there with some of my high school friends, their sisters and mothers.  The ladies at the yoga studio were interested in learning more about inversions and arm balances, so I decided to teach alignment and strength in the upper body and pair the actions with the theme of courage.   

Now, let me paint you a little picture.  The son of the family runs a pawn shop next door. This seeming juxtaposition of the yoga studio next to the place with displays full of guns had not gone unnoticed in the preceding weeks of my visit.  I kept thinking, ‘Only in Todd County.’  (Let's just say I'm a little more accustomed to coffee shops and juice bars next to my yoga studios.)  As we ladies were sitting in the front receiving area, allowing the room to cool off from the heated class before, we were greeted by a burly gentlemen in overalls toting some sort of rifle. Of course, he was headed to the pawn shop, but that didn’t keep him from letting out a friendly,“I’m not headed for you!” to relieve a little of the tension that was naturally there.  Everyone made light of the event, and we moved on with our morning. 

In India, the gesture of fearlessness is the right hand held at chest height with the palm open and facing outward. (See the photo above.)  It has a sort of softness and roundness to it, unlike our hardened palm-face-out ‘talk to the hand’ gesture that means the conversation is over. It’s a showing that there’s nothing being held that could hurt you, and so you are beckoned closer, to the possibly even more frightening process of intimacy. Yoga is not just that which is peaceable, calming, or harmless. It invites us to raise the stakes as much as lower them.It brings us into the churning and heat of facing our interior selves and our exterior lives.

What I taught on Saturday to the ladies who were relatively new to bearing their bodies’ weight on their hands was that fearlessness is not about hot having any fear, but rather being afraid enough of the right things. Something gives us a moment of pause, and we take the time to give the right amount of respect to something that could hurt us. When we do that, we get to keep going, trying, and living. What would otherwise stop us completely becomes the invitation to more. 

The value-added project, a phrase my teacher loves to use, becomes not just staying in your own conversation, not just keeping your same point of view, but rather really bringing your hard-won experiences and opinions to bear in moments when there could really be some growth and learning.

Bravery is not the opposite of staying safe, nor is it willfully putting yourself in harm’s way. It is being willing to take the kinds of risks that you can take, of stepping up to your capacity and capabilities.  I hope that I can give these teachings to my son, over time and through example.  I hope that he will be able to listen, learn, and act in ways that are truly heroic. 

Let it Mix with You

"Christmas light" Nataraja and Sivakamasundari just outside the temple at Cidambaram.  

 

About six weeks ago, I was still in India.  If you read the post before this, you’ll know that it was quasi-miraculous that I was even there in the first place.  It was an adventure and a lesson in stamina of all sorts.  Over something like seventeen temple experiences in the two weeks, it became more natural to me to be wrapped in the six yards of fabric that a sari requires.  I got used to my bare feet on the temple floors, picking up whatever was on the ground there.  And it felt right for my forehead to always be smeared with a dot of kumkum, a red powder, and a line (or three) of vibhuti, the white sacred ash. 

We were asked to do all of these outward shows, because Douglas likes to remind us that, “Nobody cares what you believe.  They care what you do.”  So, we came correct.  In addition to the saris, braided hair was required for the temple (and should always be ‘neat’ in any case), we wore fancy bindis, lined our eyes, and made sure we always had on our earrings, necklaces, and bangles.  Let’s just say it was a time commitment made of love.  And we were rewarded for our efforts: people took our pictures, they thanked us, and they even gave us little sparkly OK signs with their hands and said “Super!” 

That’s not to say it didn’t get old.  Sometimes I wanted to just leave my hair down and put on no jewelry and throw on a nightie.  Ever-vigilant for our modesty, though, the Muslim men who sold me these long, printed cotton gowns were sure to shout “NIGHTIE!” every time I looked at one, just to make sure I knew that it was not daywear.  

 

Photo of village girl in a nightie by Laura Patterson. 

By the end of each long, sweaty day I would inevitably forget about my extra make-up and wipe my brow, smearing together a kind of paste made of my sweat and skin, of kumkum and vibhuti.  Then I would get out one of my hundreds of baby wipes and clean it all off of my face. 

The vibhuti that we got most likely was not made from the ritual fires in the temples where we were.  Apparently, Tiruchendur is one of the major suppliers of vibhuti for Tamil Nadu, the region where we were pilgrims.  It is probably cow dung, with maybe some other ingredients thrown in.  In any case, the ritual fires are offered valuable fuel.  I kept thinking of how much our offerings would cost if I had to buy them from the Whole Foods at Columbus Circle but I knew that what we were doing in ‘wasting’ all those groceries would turn into meals for poorer pilgrims and generally mean a lot to the temple itself.     

Vibhuti is what remains when everything else is burned up.  It is white, the color of the sexual fluid, and so represents both where we all end up and where we all came from.  Siva’s left hand holds the fire of dissolution, one of the five acts attributed to him.  We take the ash from that fire and wear it, applying it to ourselves.  Follow the ring of fire over to his right hand, and you’ll see the two-headed drum of creation that beats and pulses life into existence. 

On our penultimate night in India, I watched as Siva’s wife, Sivakamasundari (‘the beautiful desire of Siva’), was ritually bathed.  Mythically, her first child Ganesha was ‘conceived’ in her bath.  I don’t know how many times I had heard the story of her longing for a child while sloughing off her skin, mixing it with water (symbolizing tears), milk (the universe), sandalwood (beauty), etc.  As I waited that night for the curtain to re-open after she had been dressed in her new sari, I understood better.  All that stuff that I was smearing on my forehead was not just for an outward show, it was meant to mix with me.  The temple mixes with me as I do some sloughing.  The temple lives on through my stories and experience.  And, falling in love with my life, I become her, empowered to turn what I want into what I have. 

Photo of me leaving the temple on December 30, 2012, by the light of the almost-full moon.