Prasarita Padottanasana, Porcelain Bells, and Pacifism

 

“We pray for the big things and forget to give thanks for the ordinary, small (and yet really not small) gifts.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community

Jeff and I went to see Bonhoeffer yesterday afternoon.  We were so busy working on cleaning out the kitchen that we almost forgot to go.  Though I think the movie had some flaws, mostly stereotypical movie tropes, and a bit heavy-handed thematically at times,  I still thought it was very good and worth seeing. The historical parallels are obvious and timely, but even more  I was impressed by a popular movie that did convey the life and struggles of an intellectually-oriented person in "difficult" social political times.  I also was impressed with how it portrayed various modes of lives of faith and ways in which people did and did not hold fast to their principles.   Here's a thoughtful review of it  by Myles Werntz who took a grad class or two with me  back in his Truett Seminary days.    https://www.christianitytoday.com/2024/11/bonhoeffer-movie-review-angel-studios/

In terms of  big things, like the election,  it didn't go the way I  wanted and there's a lot of free floating and focused anxiety in our house these days. One way we are dealing with it is by getting our own house in order, literally and figuratively.  

But little things have been bearing a lot of fruit. For example, deciding to clean off all the kitchen counters, put the stuff in boxes to sort/take to storage/pass along/ and the kitchen looks glorious. We are only going to let minimal things back in.  We really need to do that with every room of the house, but  pade, pade.   

Another small and yet not really small gift is the  return of  Prasarita Padottanasana   to my practice. 

Okay, it is not like it has been absent from my practice, but it has been about three years, well over two  since  I have been able to get my head to the floor.  This pose always came easily to me.  I used to have relatively flexible hamstrings and  the pose favors my long torso short legs.  I would not exactly say I took the gift of the pose for granted. I did work on it  and had lots of ways to teach it and practice it, but it was unsettling when it was not  "an off the shelf" pose.   I kept doing what I could and   as I would often say in class,  "if you find that the floor is poorly designed in such a way that you can't reach it, that is why God gave us  yoga bricks."   And also,  "the floor is just the floor."  I think both of those are Ramanand Patel sayings.

I had some glimpses over the past couple weeks that it was coming back and yesterday when I was demonstrating in class,  I just said to myself,   I think if I just make my feet a bit wider, I will get down  and  I did.  Fun times.   I did it again in zoom class today.  

My thirty year yoga anniversary is coming up and I thought about okay,  three years without  PP, is really only ten percent of my life of practice thus far.  I remembers some workshop long ago with Gabriella and her saying,  "many times,  I have been without padmasana in my practice." 

So the practice remains, that's the big gift,  as is all I have learned about how to practice from so many teachers,  but what practice involves  changes with time, place, and circumstance.  It can still be  "long and uninterrupted" but it doesn't mean it is the same.  I think, that is part of what Bonhoeffer was struggling with too with respect to his commitment to the practice of pacifism. What does that commitment look like when the world is controlled by tyranny?   At least as the movie portrays it.  He may have remained more firmly committed in real life, or not. 

It also got me thinking about the concept of resiliency. Persevering through difficulty.  Another former  grad student of mine,  Sabrina Little, recently wrote a great blog post about it.  

https://www.irunfar.com/what-does-it-mean-to-be-resilient

In the post she talks about the concept some folks in her athletic world have  of "coming back stronger than ever"  but also she articulates the important  the concept that we can't completely repair somethings.  She told a story about breaking some of her mom's porcelain bell  collections with a basketball.  They glued them back, but they were never really the same.  

I told her that occasionally I do get glimpses of the effortless ease of the body I used to inhabit,  but mostly I feel like the broken bells  getting glued together.   And to  continue the metaphor,  figuring out what kind of sounds they still make, what their resonance still is.  

I do think it is good advice  to focus on what one still can do and rather than what one can't  and perhaps that is why we are cleaning the house and organizing our stuff.  That is  in our control, where it feels like a lot of how the future might unfold  is not.  

We are heading back upto  Seattle/Bellingham tomorrow for  Thanksgiving week.  After that, I have a trip to Santa Fe to give a Plato talk at St. John's  and then the return of school and the regime change are ahead in January. 

So, that's a brief glimpse into the life of  Anne  these days.