Archive for the ‘rhythm’ Category

3 W’s – Workout, Worship, and Women

July 9th, 2008

 

Ok, so I think I’ve finally gotten up the courage to share this new idea I had. I’ve shared it with a few friends and even sort of tried it out once but I wanted to put the process of coming to the idea and the idea itself up here as a way to document it for myself and also as a way to open the idea up the community around me….

First, I’ve realized that I’m really out of shape. I would like to be able to be as flexible as I was a few years ago and I’d like to be able to walk uphill a few blocks without being totally out of breath – both things I can’t do at the moment. I used to dance and work out regularly but lately I spend most of my time working in front of a computer and I feel like my body is beginning to feel that change.

Second, I’ve realized (or maybe I should say that I have been realizing over the past few years) that there are a lot of different ways to worship and connect with God. Along these lines I’ve come to enjoy even more deeply things like form prayers, meditating on scripture, taking long walks through creation, and in general acknowledging that God can and does reveal Himself and allow us to connect with Him through anything – movies, music, the arts, and even our physical bodies. For the last few years I have off and on done yoga for much this reason – I feel like putting my body in the various postures has often caused my heart and soul and mind to worship and connect with God in a new way. I’ve also come to realize and learn that we can indeed act ourselves into a new way of feeling quicker then we can feel ourselves into a new way of acting. If I bow down before God even when I don’t feel like it I find that the physical act results in leading my heart and mind to a posture of bowing down as well. When I lay in corpse pose (stretched out on my back on the floor) in a posture of exposed openness I find that my mind and heart become exposed and open to what God wants to tell me as well.

Third, and very closely related to the second point, God has been challenging me to accept and rejoice in that fact that I am a physical being. God created me as a physical being and He declared at creation that the physical world and beings that He created were GOOD. Yes, I do know though that I am a broken and sinful physical being but I also know that God didn’t choose to save me by separating me from my physicality. He instead chose to save me by Himself entering into our physical world and becoming a physical being Himself. God incarnate redeems the entire physical world He created. God has been challenging me to look at the world and my life more holistically. It is not that the spiritual (mind/soul) are good and the temporal/physical is bad. All of me is a good creation of my God and all of me is broken and in need of redemption.

Fourth, this may sound odd, but lately I have been coming to accept more and more my femininity. There were a number of years of my life (mostly quite a while ago, back in High School) when I secretly wished I had been born a boy instead of a girl. I didn’t feel like I fit with most of the girls I knew – I didn’t want to shop and talk about boys I wanted to think deeply and discuss theology and social sciences. And in the circles I ran in I was told that some of the things I wanted to do with my life I wasn’t able to do because I was a girl. Eventually I stopped wishing that I was a boy and came to accept that I would always be a woman and even began to delight in some parts of being a woman. But, I think even after that there was a bit of bitterness still in me against some of the things that I had been taught and had heard all of my life growing up in conservative Christian circles. So, I think over the last two years especially God has been healing me in some of that bitterness and showing me more deeply some of the beauty and strength and grace that belongs to woman alone.

All these things were bouncing around in my head when a dear friend of mine sent me this quick email from China:

I went out early onto the plaza/square here in Chongqing.  And there I saw the most delightful scene….hundreds of women gathered together for their morning dances!!  There is something RIGHT about a country where women congregate in the morning to dance!  And the steps don’t even have to be perfect… I thought out of all my friends, you could appreciate this the most!! May you dance this morning, my friend!!

 

All these thoughts, and this email, and a few other conversations I have had lately has gotten me thinking and I came up with an idea…

I’d like to get a group of women together at a consistent time once a week (though I would expect that not everyone would be able to make it every week) to work out together but to do so in ways that would also be to worship together and walk along side each other through the special trials and triumphs that the female sex shares. Here’s what I envision… Ideally I would love it if we could all trade off leading so that each time we meet a different person leads out of their own unique strengths and the place that they are personally at with God. So, for example, if I’m leading the first time I would maybe start by leading everyone through a Celtic prayer from the prayer book and then lead through a yoga exercise and some mediation on scripture. Maybe someone else would want to take us all on a walk their week so that we could all just talk and connect and pray while also getting some exercise. Or maybe another week the person leading would feel too tired to work out and would just want to pray together or lead us through a physical prayer that we can do as well as say. Or maybe another week the person leading would feel like celebrating and really praising God and we would all just put on some loud music and dance together. I think ideally I would love it if anyone and everyone would lead at some point in some sort of way but, I also don’t want people to feel that they have to lead if they don’t want to. Really, I envision it being a place where we can stretch and strengthen our bodies as well as our minds and souls and a safe place where we can come together and “dance” together as beautiful uniquely created women – A place where we can discover truth about God and about ourselves. I would want this group to be a place where we can explore God and our physicality and ourselves as being created in God’s image in an open and generous way, and also a place where truth is spoken into our lives and lived into our lives.

 

Rejoicing in the journey -
Beth Stedman

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Lessons from Yoga

June 20th, 2008

So, I learned something while doing yoga yesterday… Sometimes the best way to get somewhere you want to get to is to go somewhere completely different.

The last few days I have been feeling pretty stressed and it’s really affected my yoga practice. Over the last few days I’ve known that what I really needed and the place I really needed to get to in my yoga practice was relaxation. I needed to relax, and come to a calm and peaceful mindset so that I could pray and meditate and fully surrender to God. So, because I knew I needed that and wanted that I tried to tailor my yoga routines the last few days to create rest and relaxation. I did a lot of seated postures and tried to pray and meditate a lot, but each time I tried I ended up frustrated because no matter how hard I tried to clear my mind and allow myself to just be fully with God in the moment and work through poses that would calm and focus my mind I couldn’t – I couldn’t focus, I couldn’t pray, I kept getting distracted, I kept feeling anxious and stressed instead of relaxed. I tried all different relaxing poses. I tried using form prayers since my own prayers were so scattered. But, nothing really seemed to be getting me to that place where I could calm down and just let God take over all my worries.

Then yesterday something happened. I was frustrated with trying to relax and I found that I unexpectedly had a bit of extra time for doing yoga that morning so I decided to just try out this balancing routine that I had read about on line the night before. I knew that the routine was a bit more strenuous then what I normally have been doing and I knew that it wasn’t a routine that would help me relax – these were poses that would get my heart rate up (not really something I thought I needed any help with right then), but I thought I’d try it.

As I moved from one pose to another, usually only capable of holding each for a few seconds before falling out of it and having to try again, something amazing happened – My mind stopped stressing and thinking and worrying. The poses were just hard enough to challenge me enough that I HAD to focus on my body and when I was focusing on my body I couldn’t focus on all the other stuff. In the end I was able to reach a place of relaxation and calm and was able to approach God’s throne with a posture of surrender not through meditation and quieting my mind and relaxing my body like I had originally thought but through challenging my body and focusing my mind on something very tangible. It was definitely a learning experience. I love the things that God has been showing me about my physicality and how that can relate to my spirituality. I’m definitely still a long way from really seeing myself as a holistic, connected, integrated being, but I’m getting there. J

“The storm is coming but I don’t mind.
People are dying, I close my blinds.
All that I know is I’m breathing now.
I want to change the world…instead I sleep.
I want to believe in more than you and me.
But all that I know is I’m breathing.
All I can do is keep breathing.
All we can do is keep breathing now.”

 – Ingrid Michaelson, Keep Breathing

 

Rejoicing in the journey -
Beth Stedman

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Thoughts on a rhythm for life…

January 16th, 2008

I just got off the phone with my dear friend and mentor, Tara, and my heart feels glad. There are those we meet on our journey who feel as kindred spirits, and Tara has always been that for me…a “soul friend”. Then there are moments when those kindred spirits speak words that resonate with you, when they share things God is doing in their lives and you find that it is very similar to the paths God is taking you down as well, and you feel freedom and encouragement and challenged… that’s what talking with her tonight was for me.

One of the things we talked about is the idea of creating a rhythm for life and not a rhythm that is someone else’s or that is inspired by should’s and shouldnot’s but a rhythm that comes from listening to yourself and to God and together with God creating a rhythm that works for you at that place and time in your life. That has been something that I have been thinking and praying a lot about lately as I have briefly shared here and I wanted to share a little more about that process for me…

As I’ve thought about creating a rhythm and “rule” (using the word in the way that monasteries would use it) for my life I have found that for me it has been helpful to break it down into smaller pieces…what parts of my life and things in my life do I want and need to create rhythm for?

For starters my health… this past year I really struggled with some health issues and I have felt that this year I need to create some rhythm and rules for the sake of my health. The first rhythm that I created for this was put in place not by me but by my doctor when he “prescribed” (he’s a homeopathic type doctor so it’s not really a prescription) a number of vitamins and minerals and supplements for me to take and gave me specific directions on when to take them. I have some that I take first thing upon waking up and 30 minutes before eating, I have others I take with every meal, and I have others that I take right before bed (and 2 hours after eating). This has become a habit for me a sort of rhythm and as I started to think about wanting to incorporate a rhythm of exercise (specifically yoga) into my life I decided to use this vitamin rhythm as a framework – because I have to wait 30 minutes before eating after taking my morning vitamins I decided that would be a good time for me to do some yoga and since I know that I get bored really easily and struggle with sticking to things when they get to monotonous I decided that each morning I would customize my routine to fit what I needed and felt for that day. So for the pasts three weeks or so as I get up every morning I try to listen to myself and my body…what do I need today, what would work for me today? And then do a routine based on that. For example today I felt really soar and stiff and tired when I woke up so I just did some gentle and relaxing yoga poses mostly seated poses to ease myself into the day, but a few days ago I felt really energized when I got up and felt like I wanted and needed to praise God and open myself up to him so I did a lot of strong poses and a lot of backbends. It’s been a really interesting process and rhythm and it’s been fun – it’s really worked well for me.

I also feel that I need to create a rhythm for my year for my months something that keeps me present with the season and allows me to rejoice with God in the passage of time and years. For me beginning to learn about and practice the Church Calendar has been a good rhythm for this goal (at least at this time in my life). As I’ve shared before here it has been so good to join with the rest of the church in remembering Christ and aligning my life with His life in a rhythm of remembrance.

Another thing that I want to create rhythm for is a rhythm for rest and work. In the past year I have gone through this cycle of working really hard (10-15 hour days, 7 days a week) for a few weeks and then burning out and barely working at all or having visitors or going somewhere and not really working at all. This has been really difficult for me and it doesn’t work for me. So, on Sunday we were talking about the creation story and we talked a little bit about the rhythm of rest that God set up for his creation and it really challenged me. Ever since I was a very young girl I have loved the idea of the Sabbath and a day of rest and I always thought that when I grew up and had my own home/family I wanted to “practice the Sabbath” and really set aside a day for rest…but then life happened and I definitely haven’t been practicing a day of rest at all. So, I decided that I would stop working on Sundays (something I’ve been doing a lot lately) and I’m really excited about that.

Another area of my life that I felt has become very unstructured and very disorderly has been housework. I don’t like to clean, I don’t like to do dishes so I don’t and then it builds up until it gets to the point where I can’t stand it and then I clean it all at once – this is a sort of rhythm but it’s not a good rhythm for me or for Bryan and it hasn’t been working. So, tonight we talked about a “rule” for housework and set up a system for dishes that involves both of us and a day each week that would be “cleaning day”. So, I’m not sure if this rhythm and rule will work for us but I’m excited to try it out.

The biggest area where I want to create a sort of working rhythm though is in my journey with God. I think I’ve spent a lot of my life thinking that the only way (or at least the best way) to relate to God was through the Bible and free form prayer. People would say that God could speak to you through anything and things like that but I didn’t really believe them and they seemed to always follow it up with “…so you should read your Bible more.” There came a point in my life where I felt like I didn’t know how to read the Bible and pray, and there was even a point where I stopped doing these things all together because it felt cold and I didn’t know how to make it feel real. Then when Bryan and I got married he said that one thing he wanted to do was pray and read the Bible together every night so I started doing that with him. But, it still felt cold and empty and many nights I would ask him to just read and pray and I would just listen because I felt like I didn’t know how to authentically do those things anymore. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe in God or His presence anymore and it wasn’t that I didn’t value his word or prayer it’s just that I didn’t feel God’s presence through those things anymore and I didn’t know how to relate to Him through them anymore. I had a rhythm for relating to God but I didn’t relate to Him through that rhythm. I struggled a lot with that over the past two years…until recently. Recently I feel like God has begun to woo me to him through the things I have read lately and the people I have talked to and He has begun to free me to experiment and try out new ways to relate to Him. I still feel like I’m learning how to relate to God, still trying to figure out what is a good workable rhythm for me and God, but I feel new freedom in figuring that out. One thing I have begun to do is Bryan and I have begun to read the book of common prayers together on the weekend and it has been really nice (as I have mentioned here before). In practicing the church calendar I have also tried to incorporate other different forms of worship into my life like going to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve and planning on attending a liturgical service on Ash Wednesday. I have also started to think more about who I am, and what works for me and how God created me to relate to him – when do I experience His presence? What things does He speak to me through? And trying to not listen to the should’s and shouldnot’s of how I am “suppose” to connect with God but allowing Him to openly call me in any way He chooses, whether it be through something I read, or a picture, or a movie, or a conversation I had with someone, or whatever. In this process one thing I am realizing is that often God speaks to me through community through other people and often I experience him in community and through other people. So, one rhythm I would like to incorporate into my life is speaking more regularly with “soul friends” like Tara, and the many other women (and men) who encourage me and challenge me and speak God’s truth into my life. God has also been speaking to me a lot lately about social justice and the need to care for the things Jesus cared for and came for — “He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18-19) I want to walk with God in a rhythm of care and concern for his creation, his people, and his redemptive work on this earth. I don’t know what all this will look like, I’m still fleshing it out, but I feel excited to experiment with God and allow myself to relate to Him in new ways and be called and lead by Him in honesty to the person He created me to be. Interesting enough as I’ve begun to experiment with new ways to relate to God the old ways of reading His word and free form prayer have taken on new meaning and have seemed to come alive again as I’ve mixed in new forms and ways of connecting with God.

I think I also desire to create a rhythm of play and “delight” in my life. I have always been a pretty serious, “heady” person and playing and laughing and delighting have not been strengths of mine, but I feel God calling me to play with Him, to enjoy life with Him, to delight in Him, in others, in the world and life around me. I want to take more long walks through the park and delight in the trees and creation around me, I want to play with kids more and laugh and run and play tag and delight in the innocence of childhood and the beauty of the unique people God creates, I want to take more pictures and delight in and capture the beauty around me, I want to sit silently and smile and delight in and enjoy God’s presence with me, I want to laugh with friends and delight in the joy of common connections , I want to dance and delight in the movement and life that God has given me…the list could go on…I think I just get really wrapped up in all the things I have to do in any given day and all the things I should do, and the “good” girl I should be and I forget to just be and delight and play. I’m not sure yet what a rhythm of delight would look like but it’s something I want to incorporate more into my daily/weekly life.

Anyway, those are some thoughts I’ve been having on life rhythms. If any of you have done things that have incorporated rhythm and healthy structure into your life that you liked and that worked for you I would love to hear about it… as I am still processing all of this and trying to create a rhythm and pattern for my life I love hearing what works for other people – maybe I can steal some of your ideas J

May the blessings of walking with God in a rhythm that is authentic to your being and healthy for the time and place your find yourself in be known to each of you.  

Rejoicing in the journey –
Beth Stedman

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