yoga Monday

Turns out that the only things I distinctly remember from yoga this morning were how creaky I felt, how the room wasn't terribly hot, how bizarre it was to me that my hip that was actually the most stiff felt the most comfortable when I was putting my weight on it, and how the other two people there with me were SO much more flexible. If this train of thought gives you any idea, it will suggest that I was not terribly focused today during yoga. Usually I can go into my own happy, yoga place and not worry about others around me and move comfortably through each pose, feeling strong and secure. Not today. (This is when I start to wonder if my yoga practice is a reflection of where I am in my life...hmmm...guess time will tell.)
So my "yoga moment" that I usually blog about didn't happen at 6:30 a.m.
But it did happen.
Just in a different way, at a different time, in a different setting.
We're in this wonderful season at school where many seniors are giving senior "homilies" or speeches, reflecting on their time in high school, what they know now that they wish they'd known earlier, etc... They are incredibly good. All of them are heartfelt, thoughtful, thought-provoking, and typically wonderful mirrors of the student who has written it. But today's homily was more than that. It was a real treat because it was SO well-written. Literally, I sat back in my seat and felt like I was a little kid and someone was reading me a beautiful story. The delivery was confident, animated, and passionate. Her words were string together like song lyrics that made you feel something as you listened.
When I saw her after chapel I found myself unable to thank her appropriately, so I tripped over words that she would have danced over and I asked her if I could have a copy of her speech. She looked surprised, said "of course", and then sent it to me with this wonderful little sentence: "They say that the number one thing humans want is to feel appreciated; thank you for doing just that." (Yep, this is the wonderful job I get to have.)
As I thought about her homily, I kept trying to make sense of just why it had resonated with me so much. It was about sky diving - well, sort of. I've never been skydiving. But the way that she talked about it made total sense to me, "I have always felt that I wasn't doing the experience justice with words like: amazing, intense, awesome, incredible. These vowels and consonants would not leave enough room for the spaces in between. It seems to me that we're always trying to pin things down, stuff them in a box, squeeze them into a corny frame on a wall... Sometimes I wonder if all of this pinning-down that we're trying to do ruins the sanctity of that special moment."
My translation of these eloquent words that Monday as I sat there in chapel trying to be the best possible sponge to her wisdom was, "Live in the moment. And if you can't possibly put words to it, that's okay. Some things are meant to be explained through words. Some things are meant to be experienced. Then digested. Then woven into the fabric of your being. And explained through your actions and the way that you live your life." Or maybe that is my cop-out for never having written my "homily" about doing an Ironman or Gran or certain people in my life or on my childhood or on being on this wonderful journey of life. Today, I'll settle for an excused absence (or at least an extension) on all of those unwritten words and let my student's words echo in my mind instead.