Breathing Life

2010 has ushered itself in...and with it the usual movement. Everyone is pressing into the possibilities of a new time - new goals and resolutions, hopes for the coming days, and literally physical movement for the millions of people who start the year off with a fitness goal. I am not exempt from this trend. Besides the tiny movements happening inside of my own body (!), I am preparing to launch an exciting new chapter in a few weeks.

I'm gearing up to dive back into the world of academia - and, for the first time, as a teacher and not a student (amazing translation - being paid to be there instead of paying them!). I'm teaching the UW undergrads about the wonder of movement analysis, and can't quite decide which part I'm most excited about - getting the chance to swim in all of the information myself, seeing things click for them in new ways (hopefully?!?) or just getting to be around that college energy (which I totally loved and miss). The possibilities are grand!

In preparation I've been spending a good chunk of time with my friend Peggy Hackney and her book Making Connections. This lady is ah.maz.ing. Her intro sums up just a little bit about what gets me jazzed in life:

As human beings we want to be fully present, embodied, as we live our lives. We want to communicate who we are and what we stand for in action, so that our message reaches out to others. As we move, whether in dance, theater, sports or simply in being with others, we want to connect. In order to do this we need to find means to connect inwardly, both to what we want to say and to how to all parts of the body relate to each other to support our statement and purpose. To do this, we need to know something about the fundamental nature of making connections. This ability to make connections, to create relationships, is a skill which begins "at home," within our own bodies.

Yes, yes. Love it. Nothing feels better than making true connections within yourself and with others. For me, it's ultra exhilarating when the connections I make with being embodied can relate to the connection of what I believe as a Christ follower. I can make these connections for myself every day, but believe me, the days are rare when these come in a corporate setting. (I mean really, how often is embodied living a topic in the church you know or grew up in?!?)

So I was ultra excited by the new series we started last Sunday at church, a five week series on the Holy Spirit. Like movement, talk of the Spirit gets me straight up jazzed - it proves for me to be the best way to connect my faith to my everyday life (making connections, you know...). And the first Sunday's message did not fail me. First, the series is titled "breathe deep" and we started out the sermon by Tim asking the congregation to close their eyes and connect to their breathing. It was like I was in an incredibly large, awkward dance therapy session.

I won't outline the whole thing in detail (you can watch it if you'd like that), but let's just say that the connections were there. Tim talked about the original meaning of "pnuema" or "spirit" in the Hebrew language, and how in the original translation "body" and "spirit" are one. The body-mind-spirit split is something that happened later in the church, in the midst of language translations and Calvinism and the whole bit (I won't pretend to be a theology buff here, because I'm not - I wrote about this in my thesis but am much too lazy at this point to look back on it and rehash in great detail).

The point being, the Holy Spirit, in faith, is breathing life into everything we do and are. In the same way that Peggy Hackney talks about breath as the foundation for life and our basic life force for moving and being, the presence of the Holy Spirit gives us the same support in lives of faith. The Spirit, in this way, is God's breath, whispering life force into every moment of every day.

And now, as I'm about to end, let's cap off with another related, slightly random thought. Look again at this one sentence from Hackney: In order to do this we need to find means to connect inwardly, both to what we want to say and to how to all parts of the body relate to each other to support our statement and purpose. Seriously, what if all parts of larger church bodies could put this into practice, and ultimately be united in statement and purpose?!? Incredible things could happen. A nice dream.

Go out and make some connections today. And don't forget to breathe while you're at it.