Known
My first house, 204 Ross Blvd, Hattiesburg, MS
My parents were very active in our Southern Baptist Church, and so was I then, by default. When I was a child, the church and the lordjesuschrist were meaningful to me primarily as a terror. I was afraid and confused about what those stories meant, and, inevitably, a bit misguided by the example of some. It wasn't until the conversion experience I had when I was older, after I'd enacted the over-achiever's runaway plan (I went to college at 15), left the church and become a more dedicated sinner, all dirty and full of evil (read: incapacitatingly depressed and self-destructive), that I began to search urgently for a god who might save me from what I knew of my insides. When I heard the gospel story again, that I had already been cleansed of every ugliness that burdened me, my bruised and thundering 17-year old heart wanted nothing more than to devote myself to presence in this state of grace. I lived and breathed an immensely sincere devotion for like, an entire year. There are things about that time that I still revisit, sometimes as memory and sometimes as experience.
Laryl, my mentor, told me this summer about my little handicap of requiring intense pain to see the divine at work around me. This was the case back then, too, and was probably the only thing which made my conversion possible. I mean, at one point my minister actually said to me, "I think you're using the church for something it's not really for. God does love you, and Jesus has taken your sin away, but I think you need a spiritual ICU. Or a psychiatrist." He was right, bless him, and actually found for me the best therapist I've ever had (of many, friends, so so many).
Those days were saturated with prayer and longing. My morning prayer time saw the sunrise on the porch of my hot pink house in Mississippi. It was the best little 2 bedroom, with a garden and a swing for $295 a month. I lived alone then, and I remember I'd just learned to put fresh ginger in my tea, a belly trouble remedy which remains a ritual elixir for me. I would take my tea out on the porch with my tiny Bible and read Psalm 139 over and over, sometimes singing it to myself. At nighttime I would repeat the whole thing, adding cigarettes to the tea ceremony, and a few pitches to the lower end of my vocal register. On especially alto occasions, I would sing 142, "Out of the depths do I cry to thee oh Lord..." moving myself to tears. And this shit went on for months. It was great.
This summer at the Woodside Church, the dead of night visits to the bell tower reminded me of that devotion. I experienced again the magical way the most solitary space can be filled with presence, and I spent many hours trying to discover what or who that presence was. I can't remember now if I told yall, but a wonderful funny thing happened one day when I found myself explaining that sensation as what one might feel upon hearing their original name,after losing their memory and taking another. That sense of hearing the forgotten name, the sensation of being known beyond even my own comprehension (which is the subject of many beautiful mythologies, by the way) still shakes me, the way my favorite Psalm did.
In yoga class, I often quote the description of luminosity from the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. (See where I rambled on that one back in March.) This is because I think that to acknowledge the truest self is a confrontation with honesty that transforms humans. To take this a step further, and imagine that there is ANOTHER consciousness which can also see and know the very truest self, prompts a depth of intimacy and humility next to which I can only imagine nakedness seems a laughable costume. I still have Psalm 139 memorized, with the exception of a few stanzas about slaying his enemies that I always skipped*. It helps me remember that I can't run from myself, and that I don't have to. Maybe that's all I need to know. In case you haven't gotten much into the Psalms, start here. This is the best one, really.
Psalm 139
O Lord, you have searched me and you know me
You know when I sit and when I rise
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down
you are familiar with all my ways
Before a word is on my tongue
you know it completely, O Lord
You hem me in—behind and before
you have laid your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me
too lofty for me to attain.
Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn
if I settle on the far side of the sea
even there your hand will guide me
your right hand will hold me fast.
If I say, "Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,"
even the darkness will not be dark to you
the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.
For you created my inmost being
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made
your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth
your eyes saw my unformed body
All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them
they would outnumber the grains of sand.
When I awake
I am still with you.
...(kill kill kill the haters I hate, etc)...
Search me, O God, and know my heart
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me
and lead me in the way everlasting.
*(I like King David a lot, and know he was a great artist, a sincere heart, and maybe a polyamorous bisexual - like most people I adore - but he was a killer, an adulturer and an unbelievable narcissist as well, so I reserve the right to give honor where and only where honor is due).
Posted by Karen Faith at August 30, 2009 
Categories: uncategorized
Tags: psalm 139 yoga woodside church chicago private yoga teacher contemporary spirituality hattiesburg
Categories: uncategorized
Tags: psalm 139 yoga woodside church chicago private yoga teacher contemporary spirituality hattiesburg
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