Not a big fan of change. I like trying new things. Today, I went to an Indian buffet and tried delicious “pepper puffs of pain” (my friend’s name for them) and loved them. A few weeks ago, I tried Turkish coffee and namoura—love, love, love both of them. See, new things are okay, safe, delightful.
And change can be good, too. I used to be a crazy busy graduate student; I’m not anymore. I get to sleep sometimes now. That’s a good change. I used to not be able to tell when I played a wrong note on my guitar because all of the notes sounded bad. Now my three-year-old niece says, “Wow” in awe as I tune the guitar. Another good change. (I'm sure my neighbors agree with that.) But transitions just aren’t fun. And I’m stuck in a transition period. I knew what’s on the other side of the transition (a good change), but I’m not there now. I sort of feel like I’m stuck in a holding pattern circling Atlanta’s Hartfield airport for the fifth time. And all my friends are muddling through their own transitions, too, except they are stuck on different metaphorical flights. A few years ago, while I was in another transition period (one in which I didn’t know what was on the other side), I started a poem about that feeling of being stuck, except my metaphor was based on elevators instead of airplanes. I haven’t finished the poem yet, but here’s the second draft of it: There's not much to do in an elevator-- They aren’t meant for people to stay in. But I hopped in, excited, because it was time. The button pushed, the doors closed, I looked up. The lights changed--up, up, up, and stop-- The doors didn't open at my stop. I pushed the button again, but nothing happened. With I sigh, I leaned back to wait. Finally, I pushed a different floor-- The doors didn't open there either. Another stop--but still closed doors barred me. Another stop--no change. Up, down, push, wait-- I tried floor after floor Each floor multiple times-- Impatient, worried, eager, scared, and Finally just ready to accept any floor, But the elevator doors are still closed. I hear people enjoying the other side of the elevator doors, But I'm stuck in an elevator with nothing to do but wait.
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Recently, I started doing Crossfit. Actually, I’m not sure how to word that; whenever I learn about a new activity, I’m hesitant on what the verb form looks like. And, I’m such a beginner that my “doing” Crossfit looks a little more like watching other people lift large weights over their heads, contemplating my own miniscule weights, and trying to replicate their movements.
I felt the same way when I started yoga last year. I heard the instructor call the next pose: “Warrior 2.” Everyone else was already in position while I was still placing my feet. Even worse (or better, if you’re sadistic) was when the instructor would stop by my mat to guide me into a pose that left the rest of the class hanging, sometimes literally, in a challenging pose until she finished with me. Sorry, guys. Whenever I see what’s on the docket in Crossfit or what our challenge pose is at the end of a yoga series, I think, “Ha! I can’t do that” even though both of my instructors are wonderfully positive and encourage us to push ourselves (while maintaining safety, of course). And, here’s the amazing thing: most of the time, they are right! I might not lift more than the bar, but I can do unassisted barbell squats. I can do more pull-ups than I or my P. E. teacher ever thought possible. (Honestly, even one pull-up would have shocked either of us.) And I can get into a prep pose for birds-of-paradise—all of those things that I never thought that I, the bookish, uncoordinated weakly, could ever do. As I was leaving Crossfit last week, my arms were angry at me for bringing such a large water bottle, and my legs revolted at my suggestion to walk to the car. But I felt great, and awful, and great, and awful. How is it that something that makes me feel so weak (and glaringly reveals my weakness) also makes me feel so strong? At the time, my brain told me that there was a profound thought waiting to surface, but my brain muscles were too focused on remembering how to get into a car to give the thought my full attention. After a week of pondering, I’m still not done teasing out this idea. Perhaps this idea, the interrelationship of power and weakness, is why the apostle Paul used so many athletic metaphors in his epistles. The very things that reveal our weaknesses—the unassisted pull-up, side cross pose, the command to love our neighbors/enemies—are the things that build our strength. And the practice, the habit, of working on these skills—Crossfit, yoga, obeying the Word—does two things. One, the more I practice, the more I see how much I still have learn. Two, the more I practice, the more strength I have to learn more. . . . “Out of weakness were made strong.” Oh, the power of early impressions. Frequently, I am reminded of the awesome power that teachers have, yet still I am amazed when a lingering, subconscious remnant from a lesson surfaces to my conscious mind. Last week is a marvelous example of this.
As part of a July 4th celebration, we were singing “America, the Beautiful.” I had no trouble singing along until we got to the chorus. Everyone else plowed boldly into “America, America, God shed His grace on thee.” But I couldn’t keep singing because I had suddenly reverted to the lyrics we learned in third grade: “am, is, are, was, were, be, being been, have, had, has, do, does, did.” And of course, I couldn’t finished there. I plowed through the rest of the auxiliary verbs list. (Fortunately, this was done in the quiet of my mind, so there were no witnesses to my rather Pavlovian response to the music.) We sang three verses of the song; not once did I make it through the chorus without practicing my verbs. (In case you were curious, the same thing automatic recovery happens with the songs I learned for the fifty states, the presidents, the prepositions, and the books of the Bible. For all that, I don’t know the song for how a bill becomes a law, but I still know that process in sign language since that’s how I memorized it for my freshman government test. I’m starting to realize that my brain is still full of data that I am not using; why hasn’t it dumped it yet? I need that space for other things.) I’m running into this same problem with my language studies this summer. The pneumonic devices I used to help myself remember my vocabulary are becoming intrinsically integrated into how I use the language so that now I cannot say, “I like coffee” without sounding like a robot, nor can I say “I have no husband” without sounding lost and forlorn. Those sound cues extend to experience outside the classroom, too. When I hear the soundtrack to Rudy, I’m mentally driving through Wisconsin to college. When I hear John Williams Summon the Heroes, I immediately find myself back in Atlanta for the summer Olympics. As I was walking out of church a few weeks ago, I heard a swarm of cicadas, and I thought I was back in Asia. (Of course, loud power tools sound the same as cicadas, so every Monday morning when I hear the neighbor’s lawnmower, I also think I’m back in Asia.) While I’ve certainly heard those sounds many times and in many places, they have become intrinsically intertwined with each other in my memories that I cannot think of one without the other. Hmm, the power of those sounds is so great that my mind got so absorbed in this idea that I forgot that I sat down to write about a completely different topic. I guess this was a successful sobremesa then. |
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