Scent

I climbed into my car yesterday for ten o'clock yoga and paused. At first I wondered if I'd put a new air freshener in my car and forgotten.  But there was only the faintest linger of lavender from the old one, which is not what I was noticing.

The evening before, I'd performed with the Schola Cantorum for a confirmation Mass.  I had previously stood in as an alto for a concert and for Tenebrae, but tonight I was to be a tenor.  In earlier years, I would have been far too self-conscious to agree to such a thing - girls don't sing those parts!  But you know something?  I like singing the loooooow notes (much to the men's impressed surprise) about as much as the sopranos like to lift the roof.  Low notes are kinda sexy to my thinking, and I like that I have a really unique voice that stretches in both directions.  Not to mention that the middle voice are where the color and texture of a piece lie; I prefer that :)

I really love being in a church again.  I really love singing again.  I sat in my car reflecting for a few minutes after last night's service, thinking, as I have on many occasion this year, about how I've come to be here.  I was marveling at how much I'd just been paid to sing.  I did some studio work earlier this year which broke down to about $25/hr - more than I currently make after 12 years on the job. Now, and with my director's apologies for "how little we pay," I had been paid more per hour than my overtime wage.  My overtime wage!

As the kids of this generation would say, WTF?  I laughed at the same time I wanted to cry - about actually being paid to do something I love, for something that is as easy as breathing for me, and for the choices I made about my life so long ago.  How could things have been different, so very different?  Not to mention this isn't even a job I auditioned or applied for; I was invited to it.

Sometimes I just don't know what to think.  I can only feel, and God do I wish I could just stop all the feeling, of the whole, expansive, yet strangely stable and productive mess of my life up to this point.

Sitting in my car that next morning, I came to realize that what I was smelling was the sweet, earthy scent of the Basilica's incense.  And with a smile I had this thought: that the scent of the holy follows me into all the other avenues of my life.

And I feel that too.

I'm very grateful for that, and for my brave decision to say yes.  A downright frightened but determined and un-thinking YES to everything God put in front of me this year.

I arrived at yoga to find myself the only student, which had never happened before (thank you disgusting late-spring snow).  This would have intimidated me more than words just 1-2 years ago, maybe to the point I would have left, but today I was t-h-r-i-l-l-e-d!  Caitlyn asked, "If there was any kind of yoga you could do today, what would you choose?"  My ever-present damp-weather back pain in mind, I answered "something slow and stretchy."  She began to explain a new style of yoga to me, a certification she had just finished called Yin yoga, which, fittingly, seemed created precisely for injuries like mine.  Seeing as I've long wanted to complete yoga teacher training, I was a more than eager student.

The goal of Yin yoga is a complete letting go of effort.  No alignment cues, plenty of props; I even got four self-chiropractic adjustments out of the deal.  As my dear teacher put it, "A yielding, with no striving."  This piece of yogic wisdom, to honor yet challenge the limits of the body and the spirit, is what first brought me to yoga.  It's also what keeps me coming back; yoga was the first thing that ever taught me my body was good.   This practice taught me to be with my body, to love it, to enjoy being in it, to be curious about what it has to teach me, what is stored in there.

Yoga will always show you what is stored in there.

With "yielding" as my inner intention for our practice, and as good as the practice felt physically, I found myself getting increasingly anxious.  When I finally laid down in savasana, my heart was actually pounding.  My legs and hands were twitching, and my neck ached.  I stayed curious and kept my breathing focused (thank you Dr. Loven), continuing to reflect on "yielding."  Images, flashcards, began flowing through my mind: grieving people, weeping people.  Angry people, violent and combative people.  My hands in someone's living brain matter.  A leg blown off with a shotgun.  A forearm filleted open on an aquarium tank.  An eye with the cornea peeling off.  A face blistering off from a phenol burn.  The man with the shattered, oozing mid face.  The woman who died of an eclamptic seizure to which we were slowed en route.  A warm but limp and pulseless newborn in my hands.  Last month's rape victim.  The woman lying in a bath tub of blood, a la The Shining.  The six times I've met Jesus, and the couple times I've met Satan.

I can barely recall them all, they entered my awareness and melted together and away so quickly.  I shared what had happened with Caitlyn, not that I expect anyone outside this field to be able to comprehend it.  She did not, however, seem terribly surprised; the body stores more than we can fathom.  I was grateful for her patient and listening heart.

This vague sense of panic stayed with me all afternoon.  I tried all the tricks: water water water, breathing exercises, ginger ale, and finally, an hour with my weights.  I clung to the joyful memory of singing the night before, and arranged to have dinner with a dear friend rather than spend the rest of the day alone.  When I got back in my car to meet her, I realized that the scent that follows me around is not only the Basilica, but the deeper, smokier scent of the incense at my yoga studio.  Equally as holy.  Equally as persistent in its clinging to me.  Both of them safe sanctuaries, havens for my heart.  Calm began to come.

Kat and I went to a highly recommended place that I thought would be new to me, until I walked in and realized that I'd been there when I was a music major at St. Kate's.  My roommate's name was Kelly that first semester, and there was another pair of roomies on the floor who were also named Kelly and Amanda.  We used to come hang out and grab dinner here.  Such memories.  Tthen, who walks in other than my former college choir director?!?  With her teenage son!  Teenage.  Whom she got pregnant with the year after I left the program.

No chance she'd recognize me, over 100 pounds thinner and 17 years older.  I thought about walking over to her but all I could feel was shame. Such shame.  This woman was one of six who awarded me with a full music scholarship.  How the bloody hell could I begin to explain my life between then and now?  I was grateful again for the patient and listening heart of a friend.

Dr. Connors left, and then we left, heading to the bookstore to purchase next month's book club selection. (I love me some bookstores and libraries, and Half Price Books makes it all the better.)  After that, I decided to make it a double-yoga day - ah, the benefits of an unlimited membership! - and returned to my car for another reminder that the holy was still with me.

Scent is 80% of memory, at my last reading of the research.  Not an insignificant fact to mention here.

I've not yet regretted anything this year, this choice to say yes.  YES to the several and finally last minute changes in living arrangements, YES to music again, YES to all the people and opportunities that have arrived.  God is saying something to me, I am overwhelmingly certain of this.  I finally feel ready to listen, but I can't yet discern the message, the path.  I am filled with knowing that I'm at a pivotal point in my life.

And I'm terrified to miss the message.