The Sacred Is Never Somewhere Else

I stopped at the Vietnamese place in town on my way home and ordered Pho to go. Jewish penicillin - but with rice noodles instead of matzo balls, really any variation on chicken soup would do. After I ate, I stripped off my clothes and slid into bed, trying to prop myself up just enough to maximize breathing. I set an alarm, which I proceeded to ignore 90 minutes later, and ended up staying in bed till about 5:30pm. Now it’s 7:30. I had a grilled cheese sandwich for dinner, and shared an apple with Chalupa (she loves all kinds of fruit), followed by a couple handfuls of Trader Joe’s version of M&Ms.

And now I am here, cursor blinking.

Aviva is at a friend’s house. Pearl will be home shortly; he had a half day today and spent some time with his grandpa, then went over to his dad’s community since there are twin toddlers there he loves spending time with.

My head is foggy, so I wonder why I sat down to write a blog post. But I think that may be the reason, actually. To sit and write even when I am not the least bit inspired feels worthwhile. It’s the “practice” aspect of writing, the reminder to myself that much of what I write will be just this, a kind of clearing.

There’s a passage in the daily morning prayers; more traditionally observant Jews recite this daily, though I only encounter it when I go to Shabbat morning services from time to time.

”Blessed are you, the Architect, our God, sovereign of all worlds who shaped the human being with wisdom, making for us all the openings and vessels of the body. It is revealed and known before your Throne of Glory that if one of these passage-ways be open when it should be closed, or blocked up when it should be free, one could not stay alive or stand before you. Blessed are you, Miraculous, the wondrous healer of all flesh.”

The commentary, from Rabbi Arthur Green, goes on:

“This blessing expresses wonder at the simple but necessary functioning of the human body. We do not need to stand before any greater wonder of nature than our own bodies in order to appreciate the intricacy and beauty with which our world is endowed. A sense of awe at our own creation is a starting point of prayer.”

This kind of writing — showing up, uninspired, with a bad cold on a Wednesday night — reminds me of this morning prayer. It’s a way of entering the space, of acknowledging what is working, of checking in and entering sacred space without waiting to feel connected to anything larger than myself as a prerequisite.

It’s funny to be quoting prayers of gratitude spoken upon waking in the evening, but maybe arriving in a moment of gratitude is something one can do at any hour. Especially since I’m under the weather, noticing and appreciating all the systems of my body that are working is quite miraculous and helps me focus less on feeling cruddy and more on the fact that my body is working hard to get better.

I’ve always loved that passage about the openings. If one of these passage-ways be open when it should be closed, or blocked up when it should be free, one could not stay alive or stand before you. Every time I encounter this words, I slow down and read them a couple of times. Almost reflexively, I do a body scan — ears, nostrils, mouth, anus, vagina. Openings to the body that are crucial to life, to survival, to existence, to health, each serving a critical purpose in the whole.

A cold is no big deal, obviously, but it is just enough of a disruption to call my attention to just how amazing it is to live inside of a body that mostly functions as it should.

I said to Mani last night, I do not want to get sick. I wasn’t talking about the cold. I was talking about stress. We have seen very firsthand the realities of extreme stress and trauma and how these make us vulnerable and susceptible to chronic illness. To be very clear, they are not the only reasons for developing illness, but the wear on our immune systems is undeniable.

This morning, after having my coffee and doing a little work, I rolled out my yoga mat for the seventh day in a row. I turned on the video from this free series and propped up my phone, wiping dog hair from the soles of my feet as I found my seated position. Thirty minutes later, I scrambled some eggs with the steamed broccoli leftover from last night’s dinner and put some bread in the toaster. It is amazing to me, squarely in my mid-40s, that these simple forms of self-care and prioritizing my physical well-being still come as something of a surprise to me. I’m doing it! I think to myself.

Many of us didn’t really learn how to take care of ourselves in these simple but deeply necessary ways, just as we don’t really learn how to pray in ways that feel authentic and connected rather than alienating and foreign. And what occurs to me as I write, precisely because writing is how I arrive at such things, is that they are one and the same. To care for yourself is prayer; to pray is to care for yourself. The former a way of giving thanks, the latter a way of asking for help.

We are not meant to do this alone. And even alone — be it writing, moving the body, or resting — we can be in relationship with something like divinity, no matter what your language or concept of that may be. The sacred is never somewhere else. It is within you. It is you. It is each breath and each sneeze and each cough and each smile and each sleep and each waking up. It is the pears in the bowl, the carpet of wet leaves, the tear-stained goodbye, the grateful hello. It is never far, and it is never foreign.

But there is one catch, which is that we have to turn to it, to ourselves, to the prayer book or the mat or the walking trail or the blank page or the room we are afraid to enter. Honoring and naming what keeps us away is as important as the brave moment of showing back up. In my book, there is no wrong way to do it; the last thing I need are more ways to make myself wrong.

And so I will close for tonight, grateful for having taken the time to come here, to see what would arise if I opened the valve and let some words come. I did not expect to have the Daily Prayerbook next to the tissues here on my kitchen table, nor to have found myself feeling more connected to this body, this practice, and gratitude for all of it.