Bowing to What Is

Two weeks ago at Ruach HaAretz, I led a class titled "The Faith-full Body," in which we explored several embodied practices found in multiple faith traditions--breathing, bowing, binding, and walking. Now I'm at the Body-Mind Centering Association conference in Portland Oregon, the annual gathering of my somatic community. Over the course of four days folks from all over the world who have studied Body-Mind Centering®  (BMC) and related modalities share their passions and curiosities through classes, performances pieces, and embodied conversation.  

Yesterday Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, originator of the BMC work taught us about the vestibular system --those tiny bones of the inner ear that register gravity, spatial orientation, and timing. To release these tiny bones within their matrix in the skull and then allow the whole body to follow is to feel Earth-connected and cosmically expanded at the same time. Hearing sharpens, judgment softens. The more than one hundred people in the room swayed, bowed, and toned together, then shared some of the stories, thoughts, and images that welled up in us during this simple, profound experience. The poem below emerged for me. 

Today Tisha B'Av, the 9th of the Hebrew month of Av, marks the date on which, Jewish tradition teaches, the First and Second Jerusalem Temples were destroyed--the First by the Babylonians in 586 BCE and the second by the Romans in 70 CE. The rabbinic sages teach that we lost the First Temple through blatant sinning -- turning away from Oneness, sexual impropriety, murder. But the Second Temple was lost through much subtler transgressions: people hated one another in their hearts, failed to respect the humanness of the other, and so lost the touchstone of community.

If only we could hear our humanness, our Divinity, not despite, but through our differences, our juicy individuality. That Eden, that Third Temple, is what I taste in my teacher's presence, and in the loving glow of this community--a community of embodied spirits. May this wisdom grow and spread speedily and soon and in our days....


 Bowing to What Is
         A vestibular map

Tiny passageways
lined with membrane
filled with fluid
teach us to be
astronauts of spirit

navigating stardust
kneeling in humility
and gratitude
upon a planet
built of awareness

wave upon wave--
surfaces summoned into existence
by whispers of desire
loved into materiality
exhaled without regret
thank you thank you thank you

brain uncoiled lays down
miles of track
among hills and valleys
of dark matter

all stories unfold
are told
side by side,
sacred siblings