[SB] Sabbath Blessing

[Molly Wolf]

The Knot

I am lying on my back on a thin mat with my legs up against a wall. The 
room is quiet and dim, with soft reflective music in the background. Seven 
other people are similarly positioned around the walls, and I hear their 
deep breathing. It is the end of our yoga class and we have been told to 
relax and let gravity take hold of whatever troubles us and draw it out of 
us, into the earth.

I tell the big knot in the muscles over my left shoulder blade that it has 
my blessing and my permission to depart. It murmurs back that it's quite 
comfy here, thank you very much. It likes my shoulder blade. It's curled 
into it like a cat in an easy chair, happy to be there. Clearly Jackie (the 
yoga lady), Sarah (my massage person), and I still have a ways to go.

Sarah assures me that the knot's been there a long, long time -- years 
probably. It had just been hiding. Sarah says that muscle knots often do 
that -- they lurk, storing up hurt and stress and accumulating tension, 
until something causes them to pop to the surface. We had a spot of family 
tension a couple-three weeks ago, and this particular knot exploded to the 
surface, dismayingly large and very, very solid. Sarah has now spent the 
best part of two hour-long sessions addressing it -- sneaking up on it, 
digging into it, trying to work it out with her experienced fingers. It's 
not budging.

Ever since the knot popped up, I have been constantly aware of it. I feel 
it when I'm reading, when I'm taking a shower, when I'm knitting. It's as 
though I have a small dormant animal resident under the skin of my back. It 
aches more-or-less constantly. And it bugs me. It's turned into something 
-- a project? an enemy? Something I have to *do* something about. Something 
I have to get the better of.

"What else can I do?" I ask Sarah after one bout of massage that's left her 
clearly frustrated. "Are there exercises that would help?"

"Yoga," Sarah says firmly. Okay, I'll try it. Sarah suggests Jackie's yoga 
studio and that's where I now am on a Friday evening with seven other 
people with our legs up the walls.

It's more than that, though. The knot has driven me to buy a yoga kit with 
instructions and photographs. It's driven me to pick up a couple of CDs of 
the right sort of music, a blue mat. I found that there was nowhere in my 
small-roomed house where I had the space for a couple of the more 
space-occupying exercises; this led to the rearrangement of my bedroom. And 
so forth.

Christians take flak about sin; we're told that our faith is 
guilt-mongering and fear-driven and negative, and yes, it can be like that 
when it's not properly practiced. But in my experience, the discovery that 
I'm a sinner is like the discovery that I've got a big muscle knot in my 
back. I can look back and see where it came from, increasingly now without 
guilt or shame. The knot in my back (blessedly) is making me take a more 
detached and sympathetic view of the knots in my soul.  I'm no longer 
paralyzed by shame and guilt.

Without getting in to the blame business, the fact remains that I want 
those knots out of both soul and body.  They bug me. They keep life from 
being all that life should be. They are remnants of a difficult past that I 
would just as soon lose. And it's no longer a passive wishful "Gee, 
wouldn't it be nice if those knots were gone." It's now "If I'm going to 
get rid of those knots, I am going to have to make some changes." I'm not 
going to regret not having made those changes years ago. I was where I was 
then; I am where I am now, and the two places are very different. But this 
time, I'm going to *do* something.

And with the recognition of the problem and the resolution to act on it, I 
find myself heading in intriguing directions. All the people in my yoga 
class are middle-aged or older; not one of the bodies there is slim and 
buffed and handsome. The women are distinctly rounded and cushiony.  Just 
about all of us have borne and suckled babies and settled toddlers on the 
hip, and unlike movie stars, we're showing the consequences. As we do our 
exercises, I notice how lovely these rounded bodies are, the grand curves 
of breast and belly and buttock. I notice how gracefully each powerful calf 
muscle glides into the slender ankle, the shapeliness of strong, broad 
feet. I'm forced to see that same beauty in my own lower legs as I use the 
belt to stretch them. In a cultural sea of judgment and perfectionism, I've 
found an island where the beauty of strong round bodies receives a warm and 
peaceful affirmation.

This is the surprise side of sin: that in recognizing it and taking action 
to deal with it, we move not just in God's direction, but in the direction 
of life's fullness and peace and self-acceptance. If it takes the pain of 
this knot in my back to make me move in that direction, the knot is 
definitely a major blessing.

Thanks be to God for whatever forces us to get up off our spiritual 
tushies, and (given inertia and human nature) pain seems to be the most 
efficient agent.   We don't need paralyzing guilt and shame; they get us 
nowhere, fast. But we don't need numb-nuts either. We are not nice people; 
we do not have it all together; we have knots in our souls and our heads 
and our backs, and the recognition and acceptance of these facts, and the 
resolution to take action about them, is the point at which the Great 
Journey starts for many of us.  We are sinners. Thanks be to God for 
helping us see both that, and also how incredibly beautiful and beloved we 
are.



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I'm about to hit some sacred cows, and they moo so badly. -- Phyllis 
Tickle, aka The Divine Miz T.