We Got NEEDS!

I’m thinking about our need for contact. Not just people to talk to, not just friends, not just sex. Real physical contact that nurtures our spirit. I sat in a school gymnasium last week watching 8 year olds prepare for a school play. Now 8 year olds are spunky, ok? They’re not the most “sit-quietly-in-your-seat” type of group. But there was one particular girl in this bunch that stuck out from the crowd. From the moment she sat down (if you could call the legs-everywhere squirrely sprawl she did “sitting”), she was an electric bundle of wiggles. Even her eyes drifted around in their sockets, like they just couldn’t be bothered to focus. She slid about on the floor, feet up, feet down, feet sideways, now leaning on her hands, now laying back, now flipping over (yes, flipping!), all the while not-so-furtively sneaking glances at me. Well, at first it was sneaking glances. As soon as I returned her gaze and added my own smile, she was hooked (or maybe I was hooked). She started openly looking at me, staring, some might say. Then, between slides and circles on her tush, she began mouthing secret messages to me. I was trying to pay attention to the rehearsal in front of me, but was constantly distracted.

I started to feel a pull inside my own still, well-seated body. It was like a cord stretching out from my core to hers. It unfurled itself from my belly and floated to her, wanting to pull her in. I felt the pull and thought to myself – what is this? What is she calling up in me? Why do I feel this pull?

Then I had a deep desire to hold her tight. She was no small baby of a girl. She was a tall, skinny girl with legs for days and the awkward face of growing, but I wanted to cradle her like she was six months old, like she was my own daughter.

As I thought about this desire in me, I realized that my body was longing to help hers – to help her quiet herself, ground herself, calm down. I didn’t want to suppress her energy like it was bothering me. Rather, I wanted to comfort it so it could have a moment without distress. I could immediately feel the infant inside of her, wanting to be held. I could feel my own son nestled against me, his body borrowing it’s calm from my own, feeling safe enough to let his mind and spirit range confidently in the big world. I realized how important my calm body has been to my son – giving him a feeling of safety from which he can launch himself out into the world. I longed for that kind of safety for this girl.

I thought about calling her over to see if just proximity could bring her some calm. Then I saw her crawl over to an aide and ask for help with a worksheet she was trying to complete between moves. As she wrapped her arm comfortably around this aide, someone she clearly knew and trusted, her body relaxed for a minute – a complete shift.

I realized how grateful I am that I got to sit and hold my baby as long as I did (years). I remembered that cheesy old song that goes “I’d like to teach the world to sing, in perfect harmony. I’d like to hold it in my hands and keep it company.” I wanted to hold her in my hand, wrap her in my arms and let her body get still – tell her she was safe. Maybe not forever, maybe not even all day. But in this moment, she was safe, and her body could use that safety like a blanket to keep her warm whenever she was chilled with fright. Her body could use that safety to support her to be whomever she wanted to be in the world. Her body could be her resource instead of something she and everybody else felt the nagging urge to control and pin down.

I need holding too. Think about it. Don’t you just melt when someone reaches out to you lovingly? Do you feel your heart and body open to that? Do you remember ever being stroked on the face by an adoring parent, or having your hair run through by a loved-one’s fingers, and releasing immediately into a calm that consumes you? Don’t you wish sometimes that you could curl up in someone’s arms and be cradled once again like you were a teeny baby, innocent, pure, not judged or dismissed or wrong or lost or Under Pressure? Somebody stop for one minute and give me a hug!!!!!

I’ll hold my almost 5 year old son again tonight. I’ll reassure him that I am here, that he is safe, that the world will not destroy him, that people are basically good. And he’ll believe me for now. Give thanks…. But who’s holding the rest of us? How can we give each other some contact that will nurture us through another day? Could we stop for that one minute and run our fingers through someone’s hair, stroke their face, let their body calm? I will.

The Search for Truth and Hurricanes

Life is full of so many things – poems, wonder, joy, spring, friendships, food…. Why I choose to keep my attention here in a dark room with a sign on the door that says “Processing” I do not know. I don’t mean a photographic dark room, where you process pictures of the glory, beauty, tragedy, and poignancy of the world. I mean the dark room that is my mind, where Processing is developing all the film of my life – snapshots of my anguished childhood that emerge from the chemical bath as an incessant story in need of constant tweaking, endlessly screaming to have light shed upon it. There’s this needy, cloying little gnome climbing around in there I’m sure. It probably resembles Gollum.

Sometimes I look out into the world – I’ll have an experience with some friends, or I’ll read an article while I’m going to the bathroom (because I don’t have time to just read articles, particularly frivolous ones with no other point but to glimpse someone’s poetry slam in Harlem) and I’ll get whisked into another universe where people actually enjoy their lives rather than endlessly questioning them. In these moments I have the sensation of walking out of a movie theater in midday, you know, where you’ve been in the dark and your body thinks it’s midnight but it’s actually two o’clock and bright as anything. Shock. My God – is it really still day? Is there really life out there besides Processing my inner demons?

Don’t get me wrong. I believe that the Search for Meaning and a Truth that’s greater than ourselves is the highest occupation of humanity. I do fundamentally believe that my spiritual Freedom is my top priority in this life. But geez, can I have a minute to inhabit the human temple before I ascend? To just Be Here and muck around? And is the path to ascension paved only with the chunks of my issues I’ve been digging up for so long now? Can I actually SEE the road if I’m only looking at myself?

When I’m shown the other part of our human nature – the “not Processing” part, the part that explores its surroundings with glee, the part that shares just for fun, that creates connection through art, music, hangin’ on the block, the part that marvels and laughs with reverence at the complexity and divinity of our humanness – I feel alive again. I can feel something other than then dismal disappointment that my consciousness is not loving enough, not abundant enough, not open enough, not not not enough.

So there I was this morning, in the bathroom. (I usually rush through even this – Voila! Down the hatch and back to work.) But something in me paused today and picked up Oprah Magazine, which I keep in there for the guests. In the back I flipped to this page where a woman was telling the story of her poetry parties. It had no point really – it was just two pages of copy with 4 or 5 photos from nights when she invites her friends over to drink Hurricanes and read their favorite literary passages together. It was just a moment in time where a human being did something that celebrated her friends, her life, the beauty of the world. I didn’t even let myself read the whole article, but what I did read sparked something in me. I know my search for Truth and God is holy and good. It is where I am. But the Truth does not show itself only in the valiant and determined searching of faithful (aka obsessed) hearts.

The Truth of God and the Deeper Meaning of our lives shows themselves IN our humanness. If we look, they show themselves in the hands-on work we do to maintain our existence, pay the rent. They show themselves in the joy of a moment of connection between friends. They show themselves in someone’s sculpture of a head lying on its side or a song about dancing. Without being IN our humanness there is no transcendence. Dig too far down the well and you won’t be able to see the light anymore. All you see is the dirt you’re digging, and even that you can’t see very clearly.

So next week I think I’ll make a plan – a Spiritual plan – to do one thing just for fun, totally unconnected to the painful drudgery that has become my Search, just about being a human here on the planet for a little while. And I’ll do that one thing consciously. I’ll savor the time I spend doing it, and to notice myself enjoying it. Maybe that’s where my true healing resides. I guess I’ll see, won’t I. I hope so.