Author: Michele Minehart (Page 2 of 311)

As a fan of Hozier’s music, I was much aghast to a song on his recent album, No Plan. I sent it to my friends telling them of my mixed emotions. I would skip past the song when listening to the album much the same way I couldn’t quite come to look at the cut on my hand because deep down I knew I would have to go get stitches and I just didn’t want to deal with that today. Or ever.

Most of my early learning and conditioning with religious thought taught me that God had a plan for my life. This idea was meant to bring great ease into my life, that I could trust the overall direction and that I would be cared for.

However, that idea didn’t bring me comfort or joy. It brought a deep sense of anxiety. There is a plan and I must follow it or I risk messing up everything God as already aligned for me. Don’t screw this up, Michele. Pay attention, Michele. Do the right thing, make the best decision, don’t get off this path that God as made because it’s on this path that you’ll land where you need to be.

With time, growth, lots of children, and the help of a good therapist, I’ve begun to unwind this One Correct Way way of thinking. And most recently, I must share, the greatest sense of peace and comfort came from the most unlikely of sources: a chapter on Darwin.

While I wasn’t reading his divisive work, I read a chapter on the way Darwin loved orchids and the adaptations of orchids. He discovered of the way particular plants possessed something similar to a nervous system to help them find the nourishment they needed. I’m sure the original work was as dry as that paragraph reads, but Oliver Sacks (The River of Consciousness) unpacks what Darwin’s work did for him and millions of science-enamored minds. He writes, “evolutionary theory provided, for many of us, a sense of deep meaning and satisfaction that belief in a divine plan had never achieved.”

As a person in One Right Way Recovery, connected to this Divine Plan thinking, I appreciated Sack’s observation. Especially because he expounded on why this idea adaptation brought him such ease: each human (and animal and plant) possesses within itself the wiring and disposition for change. We are created (and I chose that word with intention) with the ability to shift, adapt, and change.

And as I look around our current world riddled with fear and anxiety of the unknowns related to a virus, the economy, and how families navigate situations, I see the way Master Plan thinking is limiting us.

We turn to the Governor (who I didn’t vote for but will every election moving forward) at 2PM to hear how he’s going to move us through this. And if not the Governor, we’re asking it of our superintendents, our bosses, our parents. Of course, part of the gig of leadership is to provide direction, counsel, and a way of doing things. I’m not telling these folk that now is a good time to take a vacation.

What we tend to ask of our leadership is to make a plan that we can follow to the end of all this that will ensure success. But much the way I Have A Plan for You Thinking spiraled me into anxiety, this idea that one government, school, or work official can organize our way out of this will likely lead to many of us following the rules but loosing sight of the destination. Fear of doing it wrong will make our path very tumultuous.

What Sacks – and Darwin – offered me this morning wasn’t in opposition to a plan. Let’s have a plan, a set of best practices, a way of organizing ourselves. But the hope isn’t in the plan, it’s in the wiring. It’s not just how it’s brought together, but by what it uses to be successful: The human ability to adapt and change in order to survive.

There’s a seed of divinity written into every living organism that allows us to sense what we need, and change us to find ways to meet those needs.

Instead of engaging our energies to perfectly execute an unknown plan, we have the freedom to listen deeply to what we need and creatively explore the ways we can meet those needs.

I actually believe we’re all going to be okay. I believe it will be extremely challenging, and a hard-fought success. But it will be okay. And my faith doesn’t come from it aligning with a Master Plan. It comes from believing in what the Master Planner put into each of us: the ability to change and adapt to challenging and even threatening situations.

Our best leaders aren’t going to micromanage us into submission. They’re going resource us for making the best decision. They’re going to remind us of our abilities and support our efforts. They’re going to show up for us each day and they’re not going to blame the plan, they’re going to adapt. They’re going to ask us one million times “what do you need?” and they’re going to believe in your and my ability to respond honestly so that we can adapt to those needs.

I do believe it, the verse that makes a promise about God’s plan: a plan to prosper and not to harm. The direction of the universe is bent toward goodness. And while struggle may exist, that was never the plan or the design. What was written into the blueprint was an organic means of change as the circumstances require it. We are able to find new ways of flourishing.

Here’s to it.

I’m thankful for our church family and the experience a Sunday can bring when we gather ourselves together and make the trek to remember what God is like, in case the details of the week hides what we know to be true.

And there are Sundays, like today, that I’m glad I can be reminded by a pleasant bike ride with my children, hearing the the call of the Killdear we like to imagine as the mama who made a home in our drive this summer. I watched my children swerve for the willy worms and ask if they could come back and pick up the trash.

I found a few more zucchini in the garden that needed purpose and discovered the corn JJ tossed in as a “what if” was ready to come off. While they simmered in the pot of chowder, we sliced into a melon that came into being from a tiny seed and the sweat of our brow, a cantaloupe from our very own sliver of ground.

I listened to my kids play “band” and write stories and make up “shows” that had no purpose except for a reason for them to ask me to watch, listen, read. See me, mom. Take a second and see me. And because there is no hurry to the next place, no stricken hunger from our scurrying today, I could. I could stop, watch, listen.

As I sliced into our snack, I couldn’t help but return to Mary Oliver’s At the River Clarion in the third stanza:

3.

Of course for each of us, there is the daily life.
Let us live it, gesture by gesture.
When we cut the ripe melon, should we not give it thanks?
And should we not thank the knife also?
We do not live in a simple world.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the many, many ways to raise children, all with advantages. Sometimes I wish for the bustle of a city, the ability to walk to a store that carries curry paste. I wonder if an experience of more connection to teammates and competition would render them more socially limber.

We chose to settle into a spot of land in the middle of nowhere and from it, our children are learning about ordinary magic that pops up out of the ground or that flies over our heads every single morning.

Saint Mary of Oliver immersed me in gratitude this morning. I was reminded that remembering God isn’t always the taste of bread and juice from communion or my favorite songs and stories. This morning it was in the taste of a melon, this direct line from dirt to fruit, seed and sun to sustenance, a partnership between God and a guy who sleeps in our home and changes the lightbulbs.

We can taste that God isn’t an abstract idea out there, but a force that continually calls us to co-create. We experience the way God doesn’t provide just to pay the mortgage, but with the very cells which we welcome into our bellies to eventually become the material of a liver or a middle finger.

“If God exists he isn’t just churches and mathematics.
He’s the forest, He’s the desert…

“And if this is true, isn’t it something very important?

Yes, it could be that I am a tiny piece of God, and each of you too, or at least
of his intention and his hope.
Which is a delight beyond measure.
I don’t know how you get to suspect such an idea.
I only know that the river kept singing.

mary oliver, At the river clarion

“Will yoga help me loose weight?”

I get it a lot. You’re not the only one asking. I have many thoughts on body size and image and our culture’s whacked-out experience of it. And also, I’m asked frequently enough about weight loss that it’s important to respond.

If you’re looking at the question through a calories-in-calories-out lens, the short answer is: maybe. If yoga is increasing the physical movement in your life, you’ll likely see improvement. Also, high-impact modalities will probably have a greater effectiveness. Running, HIIT, spinning – these are awesome. You should try/do them.

AND.

If you’re looking at weight loss through a lens of your overall sense of wellbeing: Probably.

When a person practices yoga, he is working with more than just muscle groups; he’s changing his nervous system and it’s stress response. She re-orients herself to her body in a loving and compassionate way. He gets in touch with sensations such as hunger and satiation. She learns about the power of habit and begins to question hers.

And when those things begin to happen, how we eat changes. What we eat often changes. And because our bodies are more adept at using both sides of the nervous system, our digestion changes.

And when those things begin to happen, people can and do loose weight. Beyond that, they FEEL better. They learn to love and not punish the body. The benefits exceed pounds and inches.

I’m not going to tell you it’s good or bad to loose weight – consult a medical professional. (Preferably one that is familiar with the Health At Every Size movement or one of its counterparts, focusing more on all health indicators.)

And also, the question gets asked, so I know it matters. Yes, yoga can help with weight. But if that’s all you’re wanting, then other modalities might be just as effective. If you’re wanting more from a movement practice, something that goes a little deeper, then yoga is certainly the way I recommend.