Cultivations
Cultivations
“…It
has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it
in three days?” But the temple he had spoken of was his body. “
John 2: 20-21
I caught this gem of a sign on a trip through a palace tour in Beijing. What
fun to have a Hall of Mental Cultivation in your own big "homey"
palace – a massive room dedicated to Mental Cultivation! It is an idea that
makes me chuckle, especially writing here, because I am often reminded of this
photo and of the old Saturday Night Live skit “Jack Handey’s Deep Thoughts” and
how this screen and this chair are my own small version of the Hall of Mental
Cultivation filled with just as random sometimes hilarious “deep thoughts.”
Everyone should have such a place! A riotous risky space big enough to enable
climbing around and play on the precipices of sharable Aha!-moment thoughts
that rise between the canyons of everyday drudgery to-do thoughts, and the
bungee-jumps into the vast grand abyss of too-much-information.
From biochemistry student, to biochem assistant researcher, then allied health
student, then occupational therapist, and now cultivator of many mental
wanderings (like this essay) - assisted in great part by the adjacent halls of
laundry, cooking, cleaning, gardening, and dishes - I’ve had the awe and many
accompanying frustrations of studying (and living in) the human body. From its
molecular and cellular structures, into its ligament, nerve, and muscular
detail through cadaver dissection, and onto how to assist living people
process, heal, and deal with “malfunctions” in the human body, I can agree
wholeheartedly that our human body is one incredible, intricate, miraculous
temple. Within it and intertwined throughout it a spirit-soul-connectedness-to-everything-stomach-heart-mind-nervous
system “whoozy-whatsit” that is an alter-Altar. When we honor the sacredness of
the Divine’s Altar within, we alter everything around us, and find a distinct
flow. When that part of us is altered, dishonored, left behind, neglected,
rejected, sidelined, or unloved it shifts everything else out of whack too. It
is God, it is DIVINE, it is space with everything in nothing, it is light in
the deepest darkness, it is hope knowable only in the most hopeless moments, it
is love known largely because of the most unlovable coverings, it is ethereal
and visceral, it is felt and indescribable, it is knowable but hidden, it is
intense and sharp even in its soft embrace, it is connected even when we are
disconnected, and present even when we are absent. What is most incredible
though is that in running away from it, we find it. Seeking it intensely, we
miss it. Missing it intensely, it seeks us. As the Bible story that the verse
above comes from speaks of Jesus doing prior to that phrase – it turns our
inner tables, and can come thrashing and hashing through the marketplaces we
have placed in front of it. It can cultivate us – which comes from Latin
origins that mean both “to care for” and “to till” (to turn over). That sacred
Altar can, and will, if we let it, alter us, turn us over, till us and care for
us at the same time – either throwing out the junk we pile in front of it from
the outside in, or from the inside out.
A teacher in OT school once told our class: “You are... we all are... ‘TABs’-
Temporary Able Bodies.” Every body will eventually breakdown somehow in
someway, sooner or later – physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually.
Tables will be turned. You will be cultivated. You will be tilled. Dependence
makes way for independence and eventually gives to dependence again. Growth
eventually gives to degradation, which often leads to new growth again.
Injury-healing-injury-healing are ever repeating. And such physical repeating
patterns of body as temple, home as temple, place of worship as temple, nature
as temple, universe as temple are all holy spaces and halls of cultivation to
turn over what is decaying and give rise to hope and growth. They each have
potential to reconnect us to the truths and the flow of these eternal cycles.
What needs to be thrown out to clear a way to the Holy Altar inside? What needs
to be thrown out to clear a way to the Holy Altars outside? What needs to be
altered? What needs to be Altared?
Source of Life and Love, continue to crash through my life. Thrash and hash
through the bodies, goods, money, objects, tables, honors, titles, opinions,
politics, vices, and many other worldly marketplace players that I clutter
front of Your Altar. Alter me. Create a clear path in me to Your Holy Altar -
Love. Please use it to connect and reconnect others too. Please make straight a
way for You, Source of Life and Love. Amen.
