tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-69129319214121490982024-03-14T01:17:23.968-07:00I'm A Mystic BaptistCyn Huddlestonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16698496590225633741noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6912931921412149098.post-53009040443331057552019-04-14T12:23:00.000-07:002019-04-14T12:33:26.826-07:00How to make those little crosses from Palm Sunday Palms<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DM0hYsrVNTU/XLOIIdKDy5I/AAAAAAAAGTo/0yG1uXoRLjQoHUt8eWHO-AiBEDILpUhZgCLcBGAs/s1600/PalmCrossHuddleston.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1024" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DM0hYsrVNTU/XLOIIdKDy5I/AAAAAAAAGTo/0yG1uXoRLjQoHUt8eWHO-AiBEDILpUhZgCLcBGAs/s320/PalmCrossHuddleston.jpg" width="320" /></a>Because I get lots of requests for this. I made my old Facebook post public. Here is the link.<br />
<br />
<br />
Public Facebook Link: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/cyndihud/posts/10212794477156066">How to Make Palm Crosses from Palm Sunday Palms</a>Cyn Huddlestonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16698496590225633741noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6912931921412149098.post-56950591983958819602018-11-21T01:43:00.002-08:002018-11-21T02:00:41.067-08:00Conversing in silenceA hermit at my core, I don’t crave conversation for company sake. Truly, even when with the people I like best, I need to have a time out or twelve. So silence doesn’t bore, frighten, discomfit, or perplex me. I have spent hours without uttering a word, not listening to anything from a speaker, and alone inside my home’s cool walls. I often meditate for a hour or more, or in hours worth of small sessions. Even my animals aren’t chatty, doorbells or uniformed delivery driver knocks notwithstanding.<br />
<br />
I come by this from DNA and domestication. A goodly portion of my early childhood was spent blissfully free range on my grandparents’ West Tennessee farm, in fields, up a tree, or hiding out in churches, anywhere my daddy was sure not to be. The DNA contribution — daddy’s too so far as I can tell — Aspergers.<br />
<br />
So I fit into quiet like an acorn in its fractal cap, tightly, as silence spirals around me. I’m left looking like I’m being birthed reluctantly into the world of sound — pop — and I’m down on the ground among my fellows.<br />
<br />
And then, fellow Mystic, I can talk, spinning out from the smallest remark into the most elaborate and growing layers of information, whether anyone meant to prompt me or not. I pop into the conversation like something falling on your head, unexpected and irksome.<br />
<br />
I have, I think as a result of the meditation, become keenly aware of this dichotomy of hush-hush and yakety-yak. So I tried practicing a third way, restraint of speech.<br />
<br />
I am horrible at it. Truly abysmal. I make rules for when, if, and how much I can speak. And as when following the rules I made for my participation in a college class, I’m stressed out. Thank the Spirit I can meditate. Because, at some point, I realized I can use what I’ve learned in silence, and not just to calm my nerves. I can listen.<br />
<br />
Guided meditation, visualization, Contemplative practice, centering prayer, tonglen, and all of the ways of silence have opened my ears to a better way. I can translate my practice of listening for the Holy Spirit to listening to the spirit of others. Welcome in. Be in right attitude. Have an open heart. Seek connection. Listen to the space between the words. Invite an enlightening in my mind. Take in what others give up. All of the ways I listen to God also work for God’s children. I don’t need to count how many times I speak vs how many times everyone else does. I just need to open myself to listening for a message and a connection with Christ in others.<br />
<br />
Once again, I thought I was doing one thing and God was doing another. <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RNYr8TSd2Po/W_Un6CTS1CI/AAAAAAAAGAU/RDOxMicvRZwq1O7k2gRRywyAG52L0XKVgCLcBGAs/s1600/3A6B4999-9D53-4C7D-8D6C-82546CC27106.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="789" data-original-width="940" height="268" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RNYr8TSd2Po/W_Un6CTS1CI/AAAAAAAAGAU/RDOxMicvRZwq1O7k2gRRywyAG52L0XKVgCLcBGAs/s320/3A6B4999-9D53-4C7D-8D6C-82546CC27106.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />Cyn Huddlestonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16698496590225633741noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6912931921412149098.post-34456369888139805622018-01-26T09:57:00.000-08:002018-01-26T09:57:00.066-08:00Love is Not Black and Blue<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1KpsM_3K7QE/Wmtiem9GyfI/AAAAAAAAFgI/-n5XvUFQAiMtU13mDzrjyIeyWVOebF1qwCLcBGAs/s1600/IMG_1210.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1080" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1KpsM_3K7QE/Wmtiem9GyfI/AAAAAAAAFgI/-n5XvUFQAiMtU13mDzrjyIeyWVOebF1qwCLcBGAs/s320/IMG_1210.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Blows from my father beating my mother was a sound of my childhood.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span id="goog_133213369"></span><span id="goog_133213370"></span></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Mother was tall, brunette, and sometimes black and blue. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I often woke up to a violent fight in the other room.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
These facts shaped the way I saw myself, marriage, family, and how life worked. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
After my father moved out, life was essentially the same as it had been with him,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
except for one difference -- I no longer feared my home. </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
I didn't worry Daddy would kill Mother. </div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
I didn't run in mud and thunderstorm from gunshots in the night.</div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
In my bed, I heard train whistles and the tv in the living room. </div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
I would wake up to breakfast. </div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
You deserve peace.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
thehotline.org</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
espanol.thehotline.org</div>
Cyn Huddlestonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16698496590225633741noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6912931921412149098.post-76378762912810411682018-01-06T06:00:00.000-08:002018-01-06T06:01:05.877-08:00Sleeping Christmas: A peek into the way of a Baptist mystic<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_DJ6K_1evnY/Wk13tbscx3I/AAAAAAAAFfM/CNG1JsI-OAkNRpg7DtDNhdJqEAigj6nKQCLcBGAs/s1600/IMG_1052.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_DJ6K_1evnY/Wk13tbscx3I/AAAAAAAAFfM/CNG1JsI-OAkNRpg7DtDNhdJqEAigj6nKQCLcBGAs/s640/IMG_1052.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A Thoughtograph from Diane</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
It is time to sleep Christmas.<br />
<br />
Today is Epiphany, the time in the church calendar that marks when the first outsiders discovered Jesus. It seems a bit off to sleep the Christmas decorations just when the world first <i>gets</i> Christmas, but they have been up a while now at my house.<br />
<br />
In a compromise of childhood evangelical tradition and adult progressive practice, I don't put up a tree on Thanksgiving any more. (I <i>know</i>. It was crazy.) I wait until some inner thing calls to me, usually around mid-December. I also work around my disabled body and scale back the decorations a little more every year. I tell myself I am simplifying, not compromising.<br />
<br />
I do love the liturgical year and how it cycles around with the seasons, my body's ups and downs, and, frankly, my psychological well-being. In a home that keeps the calendar, Advent starts four Sundays before Christmas. Sometime during Advent, I awaken the anticipation of Christmas in my home and myself. Watching, waiting, preparing.<br />
<br />
My church puts up Advent banners that we have created over the years, and we put out a little Charlie Brown tree that inspires a kind of love in me like a mom has for her outlier child. At home this year, I put up a tiny little Charlie Brown tree of my own with some of those battery-operated copper wire lights. It was easier and made me just as happy. (I should tell you here that I have downsized trees three times since we built this house, which I loved because it could handle a huge tree. The house could... I can't.)<br />
<br />
For the ornaments on the tiny tree, I put out the Starbucks cups, because coffee, and two candy cane reindeer that I redo every year. What? I don't worship the tree, after all. I do have a teeny tiny manger scene, and Jesus -- a tiny cotton bud in a half pistachio shell -- doesn't show up until Christmas. The Wise Men came today -- <i>behold, wise men from the East. </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fNIoSeeElUw/WlBLnCM2ruI/AAAAAAAAFfc/wXzh94I5pC0yZ34MgQP_9_wVYSiriEAnwCLcBGAs/s1600/IMG_1054.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fNIoSeeElUw/WlBLnCM2ruI/AAAAAAAAFfc/wXzh94I5pC0yZ34MgQP_9_wVYSiriEAnwCLcBGAs/s400/IMG_1054.JPG" width="300" /></a></div>
<i><br /></i>
<i><br /></i>
So the world showed up to recognize the Christ Child, and it's now time to sleep Christmas.<br />
<br />
It's the liturgical season of Epiphany now. I haven't developed any personal attachment to Epiphany. I am woefully uneducated as to its particular wonders and ways. I should spend the time finding out what I have been missing. Maybe it will inspire me like Advent and my favorite time, Lent.<br />
<br />
Lent comes right after Epiphany, this year with the most awkward minor holidays bracketing this most holy of times. Lent begins on Ash Wednesday/St. Valentine's Day and ends on Easter/April Fools' Day. With St. Patrick always coming in Lent -- "Is it a feast day or not?"-- things are getting eccentric, AKA mystic.<br />
<br />
Weird or not, I will still fast something and take on another thing as a sacrifice and an offering. If Advent and Christmas delight, Lent grounds me, puts me in a correct relationship as a follower of Christ, who asks nothing other than love and offers the same. This love is a pure thing, harder than it sounds and easier too. Paradoxes abound in the way of the Christ. You get accustomed to them.<br />
<br />
Easter, now that's a paradox right there. My dead Lord is not dead, here with me but not present, human and God. I imagined writing this as though outsiders were my audience. I am pretty sure I lost them with that. If you are an eccentric Lent-loving mystic and still with me, you know what I mean.<br />
<br />
So I need to wrap up. Sleeping Christmas. Honestly, I always said <i>killing Christmas,</i> in an <i>I've been a Christian since age 5, so I can do a little sacrilege in my own home, I'm cool like that </i>way. But when I thought about putting that as a title, I chickened out. Not as cool as all that, apparently. Besides, it isn't a good literary device. That's really why. Uncool and a word nerd.<br />
<br />
It turns out that all this is still being a lesson for me, this sharing of my mystic path. I am indeed sleeping the trappings of Christmas and letting them slumber while I walk the path of Christ in this liturgical year and hang out in interminably long Ordinary Time, which deserves its own essay.<br />
<br />
As sure as Paul loves Timothy, some day in mid-December 2018, I will feel the pull and break out the medium tree or the tiny Charlie Brown one, but almost certainly not the super big one that was always ridiculous. I will put out the wreaths and stockings and the doorway lights that come on at dusk and twinkle.<br />
<br />
Candy in the decorated jars. Starbucks cups and candy cane reindeer.<br />
<br />
Tiny cotton bud Jesus in his half pistachio shell will hide behind something and the 3 Wise Men will start out on the other side of the room. Outsiders, seeking the Christ Child, kind of like me, new to this Christian mystic thing and totally smitten with that baby.<br />
<br />Cyn Huddlestonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16698496590225633741noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6912931921412149098.post-30194344511382885172017-11-06T07:04:00.000-08:002017-11-06T07:04:08.375-08:00Stop Forgetting<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Gx-9UKjIscA/WgB5T_FrU4I/AAAAAAAAC6s/dxGEAzUz-Eww6N3wX-VYdWCXh_9ELlCDwCKgBGAs/s1600/IMG_3484.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="719" data-original-width="960" height="239" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Gx-9UKjIscA/WgB5T_FrU4I/AAAAAAAAC6s/dxGEAzUz-Eww6N3wX-VYdWCXh_9ELlCDwCKgBGAs/s320/IMG_3484.JPG" width="320" /></a>On Saturday, my church turned 30. Covenant people, from before and now, celebrated with pasta, cake, goofy talents, memories of the past, and hopes for the next 30 years.<br />
<br />
On Sunday, after church, some of us stood around eating microwaved plates of pasta and bowls of salad, leftovers, because abundance fed us in all things this weekend.<br />
<br />
Then I came home to friends worried about me, messages asking if I was ok, <i>please tell me you're ok</i>, because even friends far away know I worship in a small Baptist church outside of San Antonio. Sunday was the day for violence to visit the small Baptist church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, not my church.<br />
<br />
Not my church, but forever now <i>our church, </i>because America now owns the tragedy that happened there as people worshipped just like I had done. Even if you never stepped in a church, it is yours now.<br />
<br />
We bought the ordeal that the people of that small Texas town of about 372 souls will live through. The crying is ours, the begging for <i>not true</i> is ours, all the empty places at meals, ours. We own the questions that news people will ask -- <i>oh God, that was a stupid question,</i> we will say.<br />
<br />
And we will distance ourselves. <i>How will we stop that at our church?</i> My husband asked me that last night before sleep. We won't. I said. If violence comes for us, we will be there. We won't set a gate and require pass codes or shutter the windows with metal, or put armed guards in the parking lot with their own AKs. If violence comes for us, we will die, some of us, and others will set up weeping for an age, maybe 30 years.<br />
<br />
We will own each instance, every concert where blood flows instead of music, every church service where bodies fall in death instead of rest on pews, every movie theater that shows a PTSD memory of how we couldn't save her from too many holes in a young body, and every school where the lessons are harder than quantum physics or how to write a paper using valid sources.<br />
<br />
Some of us will demand weapons to protect us from weapons and others of us will demand no weapons at all. Neither one of those sides of us will do any good. We will continue to die and watch ourselves die and bury our young too soon and our old without goodbyes.<br />
<br />
There is only one thing that will save us from this, and I don't see it today.<br />
<br />
We will have to love this away from us. You will call me naive and say I am weak-minded. I am the strength you don't have. I am the resolve you won't claim. I tell the truth you won't accept.<br />
<br />
We will have to love this away from us.<br />
<br />
It won't come from more guns or less guns. We can do it with all guns or no guns. We can do it only with love.<br />
<br />
To love it away will be the hardest act of will of a people ever performed on this earth.<br />
<br />
Love will require putting ourselves away and not saying "me" or "I" unless the sentence we use them in contains "love." Saving ourselves will require us to love the terrorist strapped in bombs and the little boy he used to be before someone lured his mind away from the love it was created in. Preventing mass shootings will require us to love away hurt and anger and injustice wherever it lurks planning to snatch love from our hearts and hands.<br />
<br />
Love will require us to value the other people we see every day as much as we value our own children and our own lovers. It is possible. The love we have isn't limited. It creates more than we could ever use. We just need to stop hoarding it and aim it out away from ourselves.<br />
<br />
Loving others will require us to share and stop counting. Don't count the hurts or the bank balances. Don't add up the numbers of us behind this border or over that one.<br />
<br />
Love got you here. It doesn't even matter what your biological parents were doing the day you became one cell from two. Love is how the universe exists and love is how it's going to move every day of our lives. There isn't even anything <i>in </i>the universe except love. That's all there is -- love in action, love in abundance, and, to our utter doom, pushing love away from us.<br />
<br />
Loving like experts, like people who mean it, like we were created by it, and like that's what we eat and breathe, well, that's going to be hard. We can do it. It is our very reason for existing. It is as natural as sleep.<br />
<br />
We have forgotten our purpose. We have lost the spark of love that happened when a sperm entered an egg and <i>self</i> was born. We heard the whispers of the stars moving out in the farthest galaxies at that moment. Every molecule was saying to us, <i>Love</i>. The one word. The only word of our creator, the only word of our expanding galaxy. Love, it is how you are here. Love, this is what you are for. Love, this is what will carry you. Love, this is how you should act. Love, this is the sum of all numbers. Love, this is the thesis of all statements of fact and stories of fiction. Love, everything you are from, everything you will do, everything you are going to is just Love. Now, don't forget it.<br />
<br />
But we did. We forgot.<br />
<br />
Stop forgetting. It's too hard, this forgetting. It's killing us. It's taking our futures and leaving us with regrets. This forgetting is blocking all the art and science we should have. This forgetting is in the way of discovery and wonder.<br />
<br />
All of this forgetting is destroying us.<br />
<br />
Just stop forgetting.<br />
<br />
Remember the spark. Remember the last time you kissed someone who kissed you back. Remember the last time you learned a new thing you had practiced so many times. Remember the first song that felt like your song. Remember, really try to remember when one person did one thing for you that felt like it meant <br />
you were important. And if no one has ever done any of that for you, call out to us, ask for a hand. Speak in plain words and don't be afraid. There is Love here. There is. It's what we are for.<br />
<br />
Just stop forgetting.<br />
<br />
All of this forgetting is destroying us.Cyn Huddlestonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16698496590225633741noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6912931921412149098.post-89600659275299432122017-11-02T13:05:00.002-07:002017-11-02T13:05:36.756-07:00I Can't Afford That, Thank You<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OQGYECqDyHk/WftyTzJwBCI/AAAAAAAACrw/2Wlpd8MtmKsmrUMnGmt9rHmGl9iLOZs2QCLcBGAs/s1600/Copy%2Bof%2BTemplate%2B%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1080" height="400" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OQGYECqDyHk/WftyTzJwBCI/AAAAAAAACrw/2Wlpd8MtmKsmrUMnGmt9rHmGl9iLOZs2QCLcBGAs/s400/Copy%2Bof%2BTemplate%2B%25281%2529.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
I am being marketed to. Facebook wants me to "boost" my posts. For $3. There's a whole marketing campaign section where I can do ads and check my stats. I couldn't need anything less that an ad, couldn't desire anything less than to know my stats. I turned off as much of that as I could find.<br />
<br />
This reminded me that I don't operate in a market-driven system. I have to have money, yes. I do earn money for my writing. I need to eat, and, frankly, Adrian pays for that.<br />
<br />
Money and numbers are just not what Mystic Baptist is about.<br />
<br />
I found a kind of freedom in a contemplative life. All the benefits are intangible. And all the benefits are invaluable.<br />
<br />
When I find myself smiling as I walk about during the day, that's a gift. Being able to breathe deeply three times and lose that tight stressful feeling as I walk through a store is a boon. Connecting to all that is God and everything outside of me and inside of me, well, that's amazing.<br />
<br />
Relief from pain. Imagine how that strikes me.<br />
<br />
This little blog and its social media pals are just to let me share. Free. Worthless and worth everything all at once.<br />
<br />
Richard Rohr talks about mysticism being able to get beyond a dualist way of thinking, living. Not black or white, not free or expensive, not you or me, not God or human. It's a third way where all of the opposites exist in the same moment. It's marked by being able to live into the paradoxes of life, like being worthless and worth everything at the same time. The mystery of that. The joy. The freedom. The peace.<br />
<br />
I know how out-there this all sounds. I wouldn't have read me in 2007. A lot can change in ten years - or a few minutes.<br />
<br />
Here's the first freebie:<br />
<br />
<i>The next time you sit down, or right now, if you aren't doing something dangerous, close your eyes.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Just continue breathing like you normally do for a count of 10 breaths.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Then take three breaths that are deeper, slower, holding the breath for a second or two before exhaling. Really be slow on these breaths.</i><br />
<br />
That's it. First time. Easy and breezy. Go on about your business.<br />
<br />
Enjoy the mystery, y'all.<br />
<br />
Cyn<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
</blockquote>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Cyn Huddlestonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16698496590225633741noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6912931921412149098.post-70813267241312469322017-10-31T00:01:00.000-07:002017-10-31T00:13:13.975-07:00Before I was mystic, I was just mystified<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PmnOUbIXNPg/WffuoG7a_YI/AAAAAAAACpE/hm7GcG14q3oZrVBCE0HQNQ_SjT975mMnACPcBGAYYCw/s1600/IMG_0549.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1600" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PmnOUbIXNPg/WffuoG7a_YI/AAAAAAAACpE/hm7GcG14q3oZrVBCE0HQNQ_SjT975mMnACPcBGAYYCw/s200/IMG_0549.JPG" width="200" /></a></div>
<i>Hi, My name is Cyn, and I'm a Mystic.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
That's what I said in my sermon a few weeks ago. That's not the beginning of the story.<br />
<br />
One Sunday of 2005, in the Mystics, Cynics, and Pilgrims Sunday School Class of Covenant Baptist Church of Garden Ridge, Texas, I asked God to make me a prophet. That's not it either.<br />
<br />
When I was a little girl, I climbed the biggest oak on the highest hill around in Keeling, Tennessee.<br />
That'll do for a start.<br />
<br />
From my perch in the tree on two limbs which made a couch, I could see the little Baptist church, just a few feet away, where I learned hymns, did Bible drills, and walked the aisle. I wanted to be a preacher there. <i>Girls are missionaries, maybe to China</i>. I prayed on that hill, mostly that my daddy wouldn't kill us. Answered prayer, but it was close a few times.<br />
<br />
I liked being alone, didn't seek out playmates too much. Aspergers. INFJ. Enneagram One-Wing-Nine. It's a wonder I didn't stay up the tree. I would have made a good crazy hermit prophet.<br />
<br />
I did come down and grew up and got out of Tennessee and even the United States, met a man I could imagine marrying, married him, had a daughter with him, followed him all over and to Texas, found a Baptist church where girls <i>could</i> be preachers, got several degrees, started writing, and it came to pass that my body broke down in a profound way.<br />
<br />
One week, I was power-walking, the next week, my knees were aspiring to the size of a personal watermelon. My arms wouldn't obey commands. Limbs refused to bend at the normally-bendy places. Pain made a mockery of any scale or description. I couldn't climb on a toilet without assistance.<br />
<br />
I was laid low.<br />
<br />
Autoimmune disease. Rheumatoid Arthritis. In an autoimmune disease, your body attacks itself. The rheumatoid variety attacks any system, organ, nook, or cranny, leaving most wreckage in the joints. Simply put, my immune system is trying to kill me. Oh, and opioids, the gold standard for scale-mocking pain don't work with RA.<br />
<br />
So, I did what people with control issues do when everything goes out of their control. I started reading. Ok, that's what I do anyway.<br />
<br />
So I tried freezes, heating pads, moist heat, exercise, rest, all the medications the doctors recommended, and I was still left with, to copy my British ancestors' penchant for understatement, a fair bit of pain.<br />
<br />
So I tried visualization. I would talk myself out of pain, I thought. Nerves send the messages to your head, so I would try to disrupt the comm lines.<br />
<br />
Visualize: I told myself I was walking into a dark hallway, opening a massive carved door. I walked into a library, my favorite venue. There were books up past where I could see, different levels of the floor, heavy fabrics on tall windows which showed a dark night with rain, a roaring fire in a person-sized fireplace, and large cushioned couches, chairs, and lounges. I laid down on a chaise lounge which was soft and supportive at the same time. It cushioned and caressed my body. [pain still struck ankle or elbow] I created a dog. Everything I felt in my body was just the gentle lick of a large furry dog of indeterminate breed. I watched the flames and heard the crackles of burning logs. The scale of everything was larger than life to dwarf the signals coming into my brain. [ache in the shoulder, neck] The rain sounded on the window. I let my breath slow to match the drum of the rain. Every breath in was on a mission to salve the body. Every breath out released the tension and pain. I kept at it. Minutes passed. An hour. Everything blurred into the room and the fire and the dog and the cushions. Any time the pain intruded, I rubbed the dog's head. I assured myself that the answers to any question were in my library.<br />
<br />
It worked more than anything else because nothing else worked at all.<br />
<br />
I meditated to keep myself sane in the face of the pain, creating a place where I could give alternatives to reality. I calmed my tense body, allowing whatever natural pain relief I possessed to work. I used meditation to help me sleep, to sooth me. I breathed deeply any time I felt tense. Soon, I craved the calm and the peace.<br />
<br />
The whole time I thought I was doing one thing, God was doing something else.<br />
<br />
It turns out that my library was right next door to a chapel. While I was meditating, my soul was praying contemplative prayers. The one melded into the other.<br />
<br />
Meditation had opened a new doorway I hadn't planned. Control wasn't an issue any more. All of God felt all around and in me. I felt connected to everything.<br />
<br />
And I couldn't, for all my love of words and writing, explain any of it to anyone.<br />
<br />
I passed into a new time, a search for a way to explain what had happened and then to do just that.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Cyn Huddlestonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16698496590225633741noreply@blogger.com2