Tag: belief

Walking. With: “You thought I was worth saving…”

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334 consecutive days. Like in a row. Cove Island Park morning walk.  Dark Sky app reports 93% cloud cover. Hmmmm. 37° F, winds down. Well, that’s Something.

I inhale, hamstring biting. I ease into the front seat. There was a day, not so long ago, that getting into the front seat of the car was an unconscious act. Today, not so much.  Melissa Febos: What If The Pain Never Ends? “I understand that it will return, in one form or another, and that I will need the care of others, and I am determined, when that time comes, to meet it with gratitude and grace.”

Cr*p. No. I highly doubt that Me will show up. That Me ain’t here Today.

I snap a few shots at Cove Island (to keep the streak alive), and head to Calf Pasture Beach Park in Norwalk. The new Inspiration Point.

I pull into the park parking lot, normally empty. A small crowd building under a large tent. What’s This? Crowding into my time and space?  Ahhh, yes, Easter Service.

I steer wide of the gathering parishioners, like I might be sucked into an unstoppable power of God-vortex and his Believers. Continue reading “Walking. With: “You thought I was worth saving…”” →

I’m only now starting to fully understand is that this is an inside job. It only works if I believe.

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But what I’m only now starting to fully understand is that this is an inside job. It only works if I believe. I’ve always been confident, positive, doggedly determined; but doubt is beginning to mitigate my conviction. Who am I to think I can accomplish this, when so many have struggled with similar setbacks; some with Parkinson’s, some with the aftermath of spinal surgery? I may be the only one who has taken on this particular two-headed beast…

I have to learn to walk again; to reclaim my mobility, remaster my motion. I consider this fundamental to my therapy —  for me, it all starts and ends with walking. And I understand that it’s more complicated than that. So many tiny disciplines have to be observed, and neglected muscles and ligaments need to be restored. I’m exhausted by the effort I’ve already put in at Johns Hopkins, and daunted by how much work I still have to do. It’s like being nibbled to death by ducks.

Back in the days of carefree ambling, I would have considered the topic of walking to be rather pedestrian. Now the acts of stepping, strolling, hiking, and perambulating have become an obsession. I watch Esmé gliding through the kitchen, grabbing an apple while opening the fridge door for a coconut water, closing it with a quick shift of her hip and pirouetting out the swinging door at the other end of the room. Down in the lobby, my neighbor and her daughter are quickstepping to catch a taxi. I spy on a man walking with a slight limp, which he counterbalances with a bag of groceries. I secretly watch the way they all move. Easy, breezy, catlike, or with a limp, every one of them is far better at it than me. It may be that the most difficult, miraculous thing we do, physically, is to walk…

It’s tough. With PD and the aftermath of the surgery, something as simple as remaining upright is often sabotaged by a rogue army of misfiring neurons. I try to stay organized. I have memorized a litany of admonitions, not unlike my golfer’s list of swing thoughts: Keep my head centered over my hips; hips over my knees; no hyperextending; stay in line with my feet; eyes forward; shoulders back; chest out; lead with the pelvis. All of this kinetic vigilance can dissolve in a nanosecond of panic, or come apart with some other distraction. A tiny nervous jolt or spasm, and like a house of cards in a sudden gust of wind, the only messages that make it through the debris are: Don’t fall. Don’t fall. Don’t fall …

—  Michael J. Fox, No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality (Flatiron Books, November 17, 2020)

Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

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Yes,

even when I don’t believe—

there is a place in me inaccessible to unbelief,

a patch of wild grace,

a stubborn preserve, impenetrable…

music that builds its nest in silence.

— Anna Kamienska, from “Lack of Faith,” Astonishments: Selected Poems of Anna Kamienska.

 

Notes: Poem Source: The Vale of Soul-Making. Photo: theogosselin (Morning lights. Morning Sights) (via Mennyfox55)

Sunday Morning

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I don’t believe in religion, but the aesthetics of Catholicism have stuck with me. I love the way church incense coats my hair and skin. It is a safe smell, like a blanket, waiting for me to curl up in it. I love stained-glass windows and religious portraits, the colours of Mary’s clothes and the bright red drops of blood on Jesus’s face. I like the Stations of the Cross. I like pausing to run my finger along an emaciated rib and wrinkle my nose at the thought of the vinegar being offered on a sponge. I like prayer cards and medallions and rosary beads. I like advent candles and Bibles edged in gold and the way the skirt over the tabernacle matches the colour of the priest’s robes. There is so much attention to detail.

I envy the faithful. There are shrines dotted around the hillsides here in Ireland, places where saints have supposedly appeared and healed the sick. There are wells of holy water and statues in the rocks, huts filled with prayer cards and gardens filled with painted stones in memory of loved ones who have passed away. I like to visit them occasionally. I sit in the stillness and observe people crying and praying and I close my eyes and try to let some of their hope get carried on the air and through my pores. I would like to believe that everything is accounted for, that there is life after this one, and that all of our decisions hold some kind of significance or moral worth. There is weight in religion. It is an anchor of sorts.

I cannot believe in the vengeful patriarch of the Catholic Church but sometimes, in the daytime, when there’s no one around, I go into the church and light a candle. I like sitting in the quiet and sensing my own insubstantiality against such old and serious things. I am learning that there is a good kind of smallness; a smallness in the face of the universe rather than a smallness in my own body. I like the ritual of prayer and reverence, even though I can’t identify with it. I like the feeling that other people believe in something.

~ Jessica Andrews, Saltwater: A Novel (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, January 14, 2020)

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Sunday Morning

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HELP ME I murmur
as if I knew
to whom I speak
or what I’m asking for…

~ M.C. Richards, from “Morning Prayer” in Opening our Moral Eye

 

Photo: paramore.livejournal (via Nini Poppins)