deadend

For a few months, or maybe just weeks, I was reading the Bible again after some years away from it. I used a Celtic prayer book as a guide that led me through selections and provided prayers and excerpts to meditate on. I did that in the mornings and ended the day with some prenatal yoga that I found in a book about doing yoga with baby.

The images and instruction in the yoga book encouraged me in my unfamiliar body. The author gives suggestions for ways to adjust poses to be more comfortable or accessible. She explains why particular exercises are important to practice. The photos showed pregnant women and new moms with the babies. I felt welcomed and challenged. It was immediately relevant and I immediately felt the influence of having done it. Plus all those photos of moms made me feel like I was part of something, some special group of women, and I was in good company. I could start to see myself differently and good. There was hope for me, today, and something to look forward to with baby.

Reading the Bible I could identify themes across the passages and some key messages. But it did more stir up what I don't believe it - which is one way to locate what you do believe in but it wasn't what I was doing the reading for. I felt outside and apart from. Nothing spoke to me and nothing spoke of Life. Increasingly, I dreaded the morning reading and looked forward to the evening's yoga. I want the welcome & challenge & feedback. I want the presence and action in my life. I want it vibrant and relevant and tending life today. The Bible put God further away - distant, occasionally transcendent, and always male.

So I've stopped the morning Bible reading. Is that wimpy? It seems like I put the Bible down because it didn't feel the way I wanted to. But I think it's something else too. God just isn't stuck in that book like a genie in a bottle - as if I just read the right pages then I'll know God. God is to be known in other places and other ways. Maybe even in a yoga practice - if I bring that intention to it. I can't believe that what I was reading was who God is or how God wants to know, well, me anyway. It's like the deadend of it challenges me to find another route. So far, all I've done is put the Bible in the basket by the bed and daydream. The challenge is before me, it's in me, and still I linger against a deadend.