Yoga

Yoga is aligning your body and soul so that they snap together with a gentle click like two puzzle pieces who have long felt each others absence. The simple ritual of rolling out your mat onto the wooden floor is comforting, for it denotes your space in the world. In that quiet moment, and just for a little while, it is your tiny piece of earth --yours alone-- and you treasure it.
Thoughts of grief and struggle and hardship barrage you, but you've erected an unseen wall around your mat and for the slimmest allotment of time, the troubles simply clink against the invisible barrier and fall harmless to the ground, dirty shimmers of despair. They cannot penetrate. Not right now, at least. For right now belongs to peace. All is well.
You trace the unseen line from ceiling to land with your prayer-posed hands, stopping in front of your heart to reassure yourself of its life-giving beat.
It is there, as it has always been. There is consolation in its stubborn consistency.
It is quiet here, the half lit room humming with intensity that is felt, but not seen, assumed, but not heard. It is invigorating yet soothing, like pouring milk into a glass cup of coffee and watching the creamy white penetrate the dark-as-sin black in a swirling dance of playful purpose.
And we are each planets, orbiting about on our own course, oblivious to each other but with our energies circling in perfect harmony. Or perhaps we are tiny islands set adrift on the sea, swirling on the smooth sailing waves of serenity and serendipity.
Our faces are arranged in a beautiful picture of belief and tranquility and sweat. I know the artist who created that piece of art. He wanted to portray both the intensity of the spirit and the flesh. I told him he accomplished what he set out to do.
The ritual finishes; it softly comes to an end. When we roll up our mats, we collect the doubts and fears that lie broken along the side and roll them up too, tuck both mat and misery away in a musty closet. The world has become a place of wonder, and we wish with the eyes of an innocent child.
For, we are the ones who hope in the most dire of dark circumstances.
We are the ones who believe during the bloodiest of battles.
We are the ones who will change the world.

Spring Away, My Darling

  She eats the sunshine, takes it in giant gulps, grins as it bubbles boldly down her throat and settles in a warm glow in her stomach, emanating out of her eyes in shiny happy thoughts, causing freckles to break out on her skin, and dimples to dance on her cheeks.
  The land is coming alive again, and so is she, resurrected from the winter depths of death and dread.
  Dancing comes easy, joy comes fast, and the wonder that fills her days has rarely tasted sweeter.
  So she cavorts in the newly born sunshine, her toes plunged deep into the green damp that is grass, her body spinning circles, her head dizzy, but her thoughts staying stable and balanced and focused on the God who fills her with such peace. He is the same God who mercifully gives beautiful spring to winter when the earth can take no more death and groans to be released from the sorrow of filthy gray sordid snow.
  Virgin spring blushes bashfully as the Ordinary Princess welcomes it with open arms, unashamedly embracing it, awed by the blueness of the sky. She hasn't seen blue that brilliant in a while, and a little part of her she forgot she had ached for that hazy azulejo background that tiled the ceiling of her life.
    It is here. It is newness and God's grace and life and temporary. But, for right now it is here. And it brings with it happiness so long hoped for and peace so long pursued. It is spring, dragged to her on the backs of sparrows, opened by branches of trees, and delicately kissed by the buds of tulips.
  Spring away, bound over the brooks and fly through the fields. Welcome it with song and with laughter and with thanksgiving. Shy spring won't last forever, but take comfort in the fact that it can never stay away for long. The wheel of the seasons, like the wheel of fortune, is always turning. And for right now, the wheel is pointing up.

Heart Harmony

Sometimes when she’s alone and she’s feeling introspective, she delves into her heart, past the bruises left by relationships long gone, gently brushing the cracked and fragile filaments of faithless friends that flake at the slightest breath, breezing by the cannon ball holes penetrating the walls left from unfulfilled promises. All of that is in the past. Like the Greek mediums who peered at animal remains to determine destiny, her hands pull apart her rib cage so she can get a better look at the future.

It’s a bright and piercing heart for sure, brilliant with joy as it feeds on friends’ happiness, pumping their euphoria back into her veins. But it has its darker parts too, for the nineteen years that it’s pumped for her have not been without scars and sores. She stitched those up, covered them with a band aid, sealed them with a kiss, and they rarely give her trouble now a days.

            Her heart doesn’t belong to another person right now, and she tells herself she’s alright with that. But each heart pump and each heart thump means she’s young and her song is unsung and the drum beats of death echo ever so slightly in the blood that pulses through her veins. She’s got time to fall in love, everyone says, and she nods carefully. For she knows this is truth, but her heart still twinges and cringes when she watches fellow friends fall for each other.

            So she inspects the future, and she asks herself if she’d be alright with a lonely heart, for the prospects of heart-giving in the future seem dim as the twilight evening. Give it to God, she knows she must, but the lust that fills her seems unjust for what if she dies turns to dust and her heart is hushed. These are the thoughts that haunt her head when she lies in bed wondering if she was dead would others care or would her heart simply stop beating and there would be no lover no friends to notice the absence of her thump.

            If a heart stops and no one’s around to hear it, does it matter?