Yoga revisited for old bones

Some months ago I returned to a yoga routine I first began in my thirties to see if it would help ease the encroaching stiffness of my joints.  Well, something is working.  I am more flexible than I have been in some years.  I’ve been using a Try-Everything-At-Once strategy, so I’m not quite sure it’s all down to yoga, but I am certain that it is part of the solution.

If you are interested, here’s the strategy I’ve been implementing – fairly conscientiously, but not without, I must admit, some unauthorized days off:

I take an aspirin every morning after breakfast.  They say it’s good for your heart in any case, and I thought it might also help ward off pain.

I turn on some music and do 20-30 minutes of mixed exercising about five days a week.  This includes holding my yoga positions for a full minute each (I use a timer), followed by a resistance exercise such as lifting weights for another minute, and three minutes of aerobic activity like skipping or stair stepping.  I find between the music and alternating the kind of exercises I’m doing I am able to keep the Sheer Boredom Factor under control.  The result is often rewarded with an endorphin high, but it never starts out that way.

I take 1500 mg glucosamine with chondroitin, and 1000 mg omega 3 supplements every day.

And alas, I stay away from wine, to which I seem to have an allergy.  Inevitably, just a glass at night produces a sore hip in the morning.  This seems to be my only allergy, so it could be worse.  Much worse.  I could be allergic to chocolate.

How to tell the deceitful truth

The truth told with bad intent

Beats all the lies you can invent.

William Blake

I’ve never heard this quote from the poet William Blake before, but somehow it catches  the complexity of things that appeals. 

Yes!  I want to keep reminding myself:  what seems obvious might actually be its exact opposite.     

We didn’t have Opus Dei in the convent I was in

My husband and I were watching the film, The DaVinci Code, this evening, which includes some graphic demonstrations of neurotic – possibly even psychotic – practices of masochism by an Opus Dei fanatic.  Peter asked me, given my nine years in the convent, what I knew about activities like these which the popular media suggests are not fanciful.

Initially it seems the answer was obvious:  Maryknoll, the order of nuns to which I belonged did not inflict or ever to my knowledge encourage or even condone any kind of physical punishments like flagellations or hidden instruments by which one might experience pain.  I know myself well enough to know I would have walked out the door immediately had there been even a whiff of that kind of thing.

And yet – and yet – and yet… there was something.  There was an attitude that in some ways reflects the acceptance of a male-dominated, domineering bullying that suggested us mere lowly women should be subservient to higher authority.  That said we were not worthy to stand as equals to priests, and certainly not to the exclusively male hierarchy of bishops and cardinals and the pope.  And there were practices that were deliberately created to remind us of our sinfulness, of our unworthiness, of our self-pride that must be destroyed.

The Chapter of Faults, for instance, was a weekly gathering in which we sat in two rows facing each other with our Superior seated at the head beneath a crucifix displayed overhead.  One by one we each stood up and accused ourselves of our indiscretions of the past week, and then prostated ourselves at full stretch on the floor asking for forgiveness.  The sins we most often accused ourselves of were trivial and would be laughable if the purpose of the self-accusations were not, in retrospect, so destructive.  Things like “talking in two’s.”  Talking to another nun when a third person was not present was forbidden – presumably to avoid any possibility of a developing a lesbian relationship.  Another frequent sin one could always rely on should one be casting around for something of sufficient weight to report was breaking “custody of the eyes.”  This meant raising one’s eyes from the floor and looking around when it was, strictly speaking, done out of sheer interest in one’s surroundings and not out of necessity to avoid actually running into someone or something.

We were assigned a penance, usually a few prayers, and admonished to do better in the future.  Today, the whole process sounds eerily similar to the brainwashing techniques used by the Communists to change the views of the unreconstructed.

So though I’ve never seen it, I’m pretty sure there are people today in the Catholic Church who take these attitudes to their logical extremes and engage in most of the practices attributed to the followers of Opus Dei.  I do suspect they are a minority, rather like the Islamic terrorists who don’t represent mainstream Islamic attitudes. 

But in both religions, a small virulent minority can have a disproportionate and vicious influence.  I do not dismiss them lightly.

The family on the farm: grandparents move into the other house

Dad built the house we lived in on the seventy acres he bought in 1942.  But there were already two dwellings on the land, and in 1943, my grandparents and their daughter Tillie moved into one of the houses.  Unlike ours, it was an old house that had a wonderful dark wainscoting in the living room, and various unsavory creatures in the basement that occasionally climbed up the pipes for a swim in the bathtub or a slither around in the light.  It was a place that would remain a haven for as long as we lived at 677.

For us it was “Gram’s House,” one of the magic places where we learned to love Gam’s German cheesecake and dumplings and apple strudel, where she gave us piano lessons, and where we celebrated Christmas Eve.  And each of us had one night a week that was our special day to have dinner there.

Gram originally came from Wisconsin, where her family had immigrated a generation earlier from the same town in Bavaria where our grandfather was also born, although they met in America.  He had studied at various German conservatories but at the age of 27 left Bavaria because he liked women too much to accept the celibate life that had been chosen for him.  Gram always called him “Nogi,” after some Japanese general, but none of us every knew why.  We called him “Jaj” – our Polish term for grandfather we learned from my mother. 

From comments I only half understood at the time, I later suspected our grandfather was both a gifted musician and a charming rogue.  I think more than once the family may have slipped out of town at night, leaving their debts behind.  It may explain part of Dad’s strong sense of responsibility towards taking care of his mother and sister.

Both Gram and Jaj died many years later of polycythemia, a rare blood disease that also eventually killed my father and his brother, Norbert.  We thought at first it was inherited, but Norbert believed it was a result of a toxic dump close to the home where they lived for a while in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

Special status event

We have not been flooded, so it would have been egocentrically churlish to complain about the mere dreary grey miserable rain that has drizzled so relentlessly for the last eight weeks here in Cambridgeshire.  But today is dry and sunny and can even pass for a respectable summer day. 

I am awarding it a Special Status Event Day.  The forecasters say we might have another one tomorrow.   

I’d go outside and hug the sun if I could.  I understand why so many peoples have given it god status.

Jack: my brother the lawyer

My third brother, Jack, was born when I was three.  I’d been hoping for a sister, thinking that two brothers met my needs sufficiently for male competition.   But from practically the day he was born, Jack was one of the cutest little kids I’ve ever seen in my life.  He was a darling who people instinctively wanted to hug.  I always thought of him as being the sunniest of all my sibs, and indeed he seems to have been unaware of much of the trauma that swept through the house after my mother died and Dad remarried.

This probably made it possible for Jack to become a lawyer and join Dad in his legal practice.  He married Mimi, whose brothers and sisters had been in school with each of us and they eventually moved with their four children into the property where we had grown up.  It saved the homestead for all of us, and they have always made us welcome to return – for weddings, funerals, and various excuses we occasionally concoct for family celebrations.

Jack is the only one of my sibs who could have raised a family on the old farm without indoctrinating them with the conflicts of the earlier generation.  But he and Mimi did, and I have always been amazed by the sheer cheerful wholesomeness of his children – and now the many grandchildren.  Part of the farm has been sold and is now a shopping mall.  But the old property with three homes and as many generations still overlooks the lake and is screened by the trees planted over half a century ago. 

I guess Jack never felt he had to get away from Ohio.  I enjoy him a lot and find him easy to be with.  It is a surprise because in some ways he is living a life that, by the time I was six, I was determined to escape.

Gift from England’s floods

A lot of people have been emailing us to ask if we are all right or are caught in the terrible floods inundating so many towns in Britain right now.  Mostly it is a supportive and pleasant reminder that people care about us.  Keenly aware as I have become these days that my greatest delights and strength seem to come from watching or talking to people, I’m mostly grateful for the attention, even as I sit here snug and dry at my unthreatened computer.

I’m mostly grateful.  But not a hundred per cent grateful.  There are just a few people whose worry is intensely irritating.  Because I don’t think they are really worried.  I’ve recognized for many years that the threat to worry about me is sometimes an attempt at control.  As in “Don’t do that, because I will worry if you do.”  But worriers who are irritating me today seem seriously needy.  It is as if they are saying that their worry is a badge of their belonging to my circle of friends.  And although some of them do, this kind of demonstrative worry for my welfare is a good way to get ejected.  I greatly prefer friends who trust I can survive most of what life throws at me, but who trust that I will ask for help if I want it, and whom I can trust to respond if at all possible.

All of which has set me thinking about loving.  Mostly we are taught that we should show our love of our parents, friends, our partner, our children.  We should remember their birthdays and celebrate anniversaries.  We should hug them, share meals with them, and show that we are sincerely glad at their achievements.  In general, show in a thousand different ways that they are important to us. 

But there is a place not to show someone how much we care.  Sometimes because our caring is simply a selfish display of our own needs.  Sometimes because that person isn’t ours to love in the way we love them.  Sometimes because it will be a burden for the person to have to carry our love as their responsibility. 

When I wrote about MT in “My most mysterious love” post, I said I determined never to let him know how much I cared about him.  Partly it was because I didn’t – perhaps still don’t – trust that my feelings are quite as purely selfless as I would like to believe.  But partly too it is because I sensed it would be an unpleasant burden for him to carry.  I am glad I did what I did. 

Today – literally today - is the first time in my life when I have thought it might actually have been something positive to have done.  Up until now it has always felt like nothing more than a black hole, a mysterious renunciation with no purpose.  So maybe that fuss pot who wrote expressing overwhelming worry about whether we are caught in the floods paradoxically gave me the best gift of all the worriers – an insight that has eluded me for years.

Dick: the brother who still wants to be a saint

A good friend from my Maryknoll days has just recognized me after stumbling on this blog.  We still seem to have a lot in common – not least of which is trying to trace our decision as children to become saints and the convoluted path to our each becoming what we are now.

I don’t remember talking to any other adult who as a child decided to be a saint, although it was an ideal held up to us in our family.  My brother Tom fell into despair by the time he was six at the thought of having to go to heaven when he died.  It sounded like the worst sort of hell he could imagine to sit on clouds all day singing with the angels,  worshiping God, and occasionally hobnobbing with various saintly figures who’d made it to the higher regions.  Before he was mature enough to ditch the entire theology on which this bland eternity was based, I think he set out to do whatever was necessary to avoid heaven.

My brother Dick, a year and a half younger than I am, took the idea of being a saint more seriously than any of the rest of us, and is the only one of my sibs who I think would still consider it a privilege to be a martyr. 

In a large family, sibs have to fight particularly hard for a unique niche that distinguishes them from the rest.  Tom and I were the oldest, which gave us securely unassailable roles for life.  Dick did not have the mechanical skills Tom had or my academic skills.  But he was immensely strong willed, determined, and intense, perfect strengths for becoming an old-fashioned saint.  As it became apparent, he also has significant skills as a community organizer.  Dick did go into the minor seminary at the age of 12, but left before he was 20.  He then joined the Peace Corp and spent time organizing and supporting community groups in the Phillippines until he was diagnosed with TB and sent home to recover.

Although he did not return overseas, Dick has maintained his undiminished commitment to sainthood.  He began and still heads a religious community called Servants of the Cross for lay people including both married couples and single people.  He and his wife have raised a family of eight children and have spent most of their lives in Mexico, working with the poor and spreading the gospel.  I asked Dick why he called his community Servants of the Cross, instead of the Resurrection, which to me represents the essence of Christian faith, hope, and charity.  He said it was because too many people thought you could escape suffering.

I was very close to Dick as we were growing up, but now I find his faith too near to religious bigotry to be comfortable with him.  For his part, I know he believes I am on a merry road to hell. 

It is hard to love someone as much as I love Dick, and to find myself living in  a world so incompatible with his.  We are kind to each other and are on speaking terms.  But I know we don’t comprehend how the other got to such a different place. 

The family on the farm: all of us

I seem able to rummage about in my past for only so long, and then like a desperate swimmer coming up for air, feel the need to re-emerge into the present.  So the story of the family on the farm in which I grew up will no doubt continue to lurch ahead with unpredictable stops and sidelines.  Eventually I will describe everyone. 

“Everyone” is a lot of people.  I grew up with five brothers and four sisters, and my grandmother, grandfather, and their unmarried daughter Tillie lived down the road.  Then there was my father’s best friend, Father Basil, and Phil, the Black man who also lived on the property with his wife and who worked the farm.  After my mother died, my father remarried our aunt, the widowed wife of my mother’s brother who already had four daughters.  So these cousins were added to our family list. 

It would make a pretty substantial tv cast. Indeed, there were times when we felt like another version of “Little Women,” or “Little House on the Prairie.”  The title I always wished we could appropriate though was “Up the Down Staircase.”  It sort of catches the crazy, often nuerotic, intensity of life at 677, – the number of the post office route where the mail box perched on the edge of the road leading to the farm and our house on the hill.

Convent life 50 years ago

About 50 years ago a woman published a book about her leaving the convent entitled “I leap over the wall.”  That just about summed up the attitude of the day:  when nuns went into the convent, they severed relationships with the outside world.  And conversely if a nun left the convent, there was never any communication with anyone still inside.

I was thinking today how much that has changed.  I had an email from a nun who is still in Maryknoll about the deluge currently flooding Britain.  And then I spent almost an hour talking to a close friend who now lives in New York but who stayed in the convent 30 years longer than I did.  We two outsiders are both pretty completely disaffected with the Roman Catholic Church, but we still have friends who are committed nuns. 

There are subjects, though, that I at least avoid discussing with nuns.  I even have a little trouble with avoiding the hypocrisy of saying I’m keeping someone in my prayers.  Prayer as hope, prayer as caring, yes.  Prayer as begging God to intervene or to do His best for someone I love – no.  Illogically, I do occasionally ask my sister who died of cancer 12 years ago to help me with everything from finding wisdom to a lost pair of glasses.  Maybe some people have that kind of relationship with their image of God.