Once again I visit the Christian/yoga conversation.

I'm a stream of consciousness writer. I get that about myself.  At times within my life I have had great editors. I need great editors.  The reality of stream of consciousness is that I have to be willing to sink into my gut and close my eyes and write.  If I feel inhibited in anyway, the words won't flow.  And right now in life, I want the words to flow.  I want them to flow in a way that brings life and not confusion.  I want peace and not contention. I hunger for understanding and growth as a person and for people I love. However I don't want to settle.  I have tasted and seen the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living and it is amazing!

So I close my eyes and I breathe in deeply and with my writing begin to slowly exhale.

I'm going to make an audacious statement. I make it not to piss you off, but I make it because it is true.  I stand at a place in my life where  I've never known and loved Christ the way I do in these days. I have seen where in my life I was the proverbial pharisee.  I have seen where I stood so precariously on an edge of thinking I was doing all the right things however not knowing nor being known as a person before God.

In these days I have learned to stand and feel strong.  What is that? Having done all stand.  Mountain pose.
In these days I have learned to be like a child and allow myself grace.  What is that? Become like a child. Child's pose.
In these days I have learned to (ok. tried to learn .. this one is hard for me) ground down and grow roots. What is that ? Being rooted in good soil.  Tree pose.
In these days I have learned to see things from a different perspective. What is that? It's a upside down reality of a kingdom where the poor are rich, the weak are strong, etc... Head stand.  Be willing to see from a different perspective.


What has been the path? Well... for me and my life I have found the foundation of spirituality to be in Christ. But as He is not as anyone would attempt to make Him.  There is so much more of God to know.  Having eyes to see I really want to see, having ears that can hear I really want to hear, having been given a heart that can comprehend I want to receive understanding even when it comes in a package different than I ever anticipated.  I think that is how the founder of my faith entered Creation as a human baby, turning the religious world of His time on its head.  I don't think the struggle to understand, receive, and grow as Spirit is leading is a new one. I don't think that opposition to the reality of that leading is a new one either.  I also don't stand having many answers.  I don't. I am on a journey, and the stopping points upon the way are unknown. I have more questions than ever before, and am learning that to live in the place of unknowing can be unsettling at best but it is a great place to stand for personal and spiritual growth.

What I do is  I live with the intention to keep two prayers ever before me... Lord, my God who are you and who am I? (St. Francis of Assisi) and Spirit of the Living God, as it was said of you, to be your task.. please, lead me into all truth.  Those two prayers are my compass, my road map, my orientation....When having begun to pray them over the last couple of years, I would have never (in my wildest imagination) been able to picture the life and love and liberty I touch now.

So yoga? Yes! Yoga.... I stand firm.  Listen, Peter had a vision as he laid upon a roof top and in a moment there was no longer clean and unclean food.  The people of that age struggled over what it meant for a whole other people group to be coming into Spiritual awakening without being circumcised first.  People were coming to life and being made full in Spirit and the religious of the day stood gasping. I can imagine screaming, "wait.. wait." The ways once known were being disrupted.  Spirit was being poured out upon all flesh.

So I go to a yoga studio.  I partake in all aspects. I have never felt more alive or more free within my faith or strong as a person who loves God.  The constraints of a religious life have fallen off of me and I have found and am finding the freedom of Spirit. Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom.  I have found an interior life, that is more resounding with the Christ I said I served for decades, but didn't fully touch. I have left (as much as I can and am trying to do so more) exterior facades of faith for an interior reality that is more faithful to the ways of God.

I have written and please, God, hope to write even more for any spiritual community that can hear and feel Spirit in the words that I hunger to put to paper, (web). I will walk into proverbial samaria and every place it would be said that, "we don't go," because the founder of my faith did just that.  I love people more than I ever have and I meet more of them now that I ever did, I sit with people now without agenda and begin to know them and let them begin to know me...

I am not out to convince anyone that they have to do yoga.  I do believe that as a population we need to understand how to breathe in a way that actually brings life to our bodies. I do believe that bringing movement and breath and practice together helps calm the mind, take every thought captive, and bring forth a mind that is more at peace.  I do believe discernment and not fear is the way of love and life and liberty.

I will end (for now) with a story...

It was a poignant moment for me. Maybe because so many of you have told me I'm going to hell. Oh please.. tongue in cheek there. Although many of you have. I'm smiling and understanding the journey as best as any of us can.

I want you to picture the scene with me; huge meeting tent, torrential down pour of rain, lightening and thunder and speakers that were still plugged into a live source of electricity. I stood with two others as we were attempting to wait out the storm.  The conversation drifted into a place that would open my eyes to reality of spirituality in many traditions.  A portion of the conversation was upon Sanskrit and the pronunciation.

My experience into yoga has been beautiful.  The places I partake in yoga practice are open and flowing. I hadn't nor have I ever encountered a rigidity of thought or practice.  It doesn't mean it isn't out there.  It just has not been my experience. So within the conversation, there was a statement made that there are some within yoga community who the exact pronunciation of words means so much to that to mispronounce a word would send said person, who mispronounced, to hell.  The moment was a "taking in information," moment for me. When one prays to the divine do the words matter? The words matter? Maybe to some but what is what? I did also think for a moment upon how the religious of all traditions sound a like. This way (my way of this way) or hell. Gosh, what options. (We have that in Christendom. For as many YouTube videos anyone can find about yoga and Christianity and what that's all about, there are plenty of videos within the "tribe" Baptists saying Charismatics are going to Hell, Charismatics and Pentecostals saying that  unless one speaks in tongues they are going to hell. I mean.. misstep and its fire and flames for us all I guess.) Ok I soooo got off topic.  But instead of focusing on hell and who is and isn't going there, I want to pour my heart out and love, I want to set my gaze rightly and love and see people for the light that each one is....

Finishing up....  In the midst of the conversation, the most beautiful words would be spoken. It was a remembrance of what was taught to them. Would a mother chastise a toddler for mispronouncing a word? Love triumphs over all.
Isn't that the basis of all true spirituality? Love one another! For the world is so loved!

These aren't my most articulate pieces. They just aren't.  I'm sorting through myself. I'm wanting to walk with love and wisdom. I don't want to be angry or afraid. At the same time resisting the urge to be trite and petty. I'm human. Part of this conversation pisses me off. And I could easily go off on a tirade. I know myself. Except that isn't what my heart really wants.  I understand there is new ground and that this person says this and that person says that and what are you to believe?  I'd say trust and know that asking for bread you will not be given a stone.  If you seek true understanding it will come. Search out and seek for yourself, be open ... I choose to believe that all of us want to have eyes that really see, ears that really hear and hearts that really can ever so slightly comprehend the ways of The Spirit as much as humanity can.

Maybe we can lose the "hell" talk for a while and just talk......... That would be my greatest heart's desire...

Know for yourself.... Or as Jesus said... "You've heard it be said..."

Those have been the words that have circulated within my heart all week.  I look forward (not really) to writing about the third week of a year without fear.  It will go down as the week that fear began to say, "oh really."  But that is not this post.

"You've heard it be said," those are the words that are recorded as coming from the mouth of Christ.  He took the letter of the law.  For He had spoken it was not to abolish but to be fulfilled.  So He took what they knew and started there... So amazing.  He did that for the lawmakers, the prostitutes, those that would think themselves righteous and those who never dare such a thing.  He met everyone where they were at... Leper colony, women, Samaria... He would go to them.. Not expecting them to come to Him. Though they did.

"You've heard it be said," He would say.  He would then talk about an action.  Murder, adultery, false witness, vengence and the question of who should be loved.  He spoke, "you've heard it be said," meeting each listener in the moment, and then He took it further and further.

It was not to be about action. It was to be about the heart.  It wasn't any longer going to be what you put into the body.  It was what was now going to come out of the heart.  No longer could an external set of behavior "save" a soul.  Now one must see one's own heart and deal with what is seen there by the Divine, who is never blinded nor fooled.

So I got an email talking about a "late, great" somebody. I was being told, that which I already knew. But the person was saying, haven't you heard it be said.  I know many things about a "late, great" human being.  I understand that person's thoughts on many matters.  I have seen first hand some of the wreckage too. Such as that "late, great" somebody's opinion on yoga, on tattoos, on many subjects. I will momentarily refer to a West Wing Episode where Jeb Bartlett addresses such a thing.   I was being told, "you've heard it be said,"  but that was all that they had.. the letter of the law.  Which isn't actually a letter of the law but a person's personal opinion and preference.  What I say back is this... "You've heard it be said."  I will continue however and not just stay there....  You see I don't want you taking the "late, great" one's opinion.. I don't want you taking mine.  I want you to think for yourself.  Understand that spirituality is more about the flow of the heart then anything else.

It isn't what my body does or doesn't do, it isn't what I eat or don't eat, it isn't how I worship or if I worship, it isn't if I do yoga or if I don't.. Yoga isn't ever holy.  I am.  Yoga is a modality that brings together the body, the mind and the spirit in such a way that I find peace and union with self and the Divine.  I am not confused at what that Divine is... and neither is that Divinity confused about what the nature and character of its Divine self is......

When Jesus goes into Samaria.. a place that the Jews of that age would not go.  This is what He eventually says to a woman He meets at a well.  "But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers."

You've heard it be said!  There and then again in the book of Acts reiterating what the prophetic voice of a Hebrew man named Joel once spoke... Upon all flesh will the Spirit of the Lord be poured out...

I implore you... It matters not to me that which you say about me, my practice, my life and embracing of yoga... It should matter to you.. There was in the times right after the Christ would ascend the question of food. Peter had a vision. Paul would teach.  Meat having been scarified to idols was now no longer the problem. It would be what a person's heart would lead them towards. What a person's conscience could bare up under.  Weaker, was the world used to describe the one who couldn't see that it was just meat.  But the onus was upon the stronger to watch over and not use one's own liberty for gloating or anything like that.

You've heard it be said.. that there is an hour where true worshipers will worship in spirit and in truth. I'm telling you I'm seeing it .. I'm seeing it at a yoga festival with dance and beauty and mantra, and I'm seeing it in the yoga studio with practice and patience and rest.  Worship looks different.. to some it is a hymnal, to others its a rock band, to others still it is silence, and for others it incorporates the body. Some won't think one way is for them. That is ok.  But let's not be as the religious of old and insult and condemn.  Let's find the place of worship where it is in freedom we follow the Spirit of the Lord into love, laughter and life...

Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom not fear....  It did start with "You've heard it be said..." but it didn't stay there... Let's not either!

Why Dry Bones Dancing in Samaria?

I loved writing "Walking The Passage," my previous blog.  I loved the journey through vulnerability and learning that I actually wasn't the vulnerable person I thought I was, touching the fact that I calibrated my vulnerability and transparency based on my own comfort levels and was exposed by our Father as the hypocrite at times.

But I loved that journey. Loved touching beyond the culturally relevant terms of vulnerability and transparency and pushing forward to their more true places. I use the term, "love," with tender remembrances of the angst and arguments I had with our Creator as He would say things like, "that, write about that." In hindsight I love the journey I was on... while walking it I loved Him.

 I loved writing to those struggling with mental illness and to those who supported them, I loved writing to those exhausted by the religiosity and pains of modern day ministry, I loved writing to the seers and the dreamers and the imaginators.  I loved writing whimsically and I do believe that will always follow me as will those other topics.

But as things do we outgrow our closets and need to find a different wardrobe. 

I look upon who I was when I started writing WTP and who I have become and am so grateful for the role it has played in my journey.


I was a pile of dry bones for a very long time.  I thought I had awoken only to come to the place of realizing I was still a walking daydream.  Am I awake now? I don't fully know.  But I am stretching and feeling the new sinews that have been placed upon these muscles and I have never felt more breath in me then I do now.  Awake to awake is what I tell myself right now and I am ok with that.....

Why Dancing?

I can't dance.

 I am not coordinated.

 I get embarrassed easily.

People don't think that of me but I do...  But I am physically shy. Not emotionally shy but shy in my body, with my body and the Lord is in the business of changing that up right now and so I have chartered new ground in my life.  I place myself daily into a space where I use my body. Where I recognize that this is something I don't understand, this aspect of having a body, and am curious in my journey as to where God will bring me into understanding His desire in this regard.

As one who had been abused I learned very early and with great skill to extricate myself from my body.. ie, dissociate.  I didn't for the longest time understand, Why the body?" As Ruth Haley Barton, puts brilliantly in Invitation to Solitude and Silence,  " It can be hard and humbling to pay attention to your body, whatever state it is in, because it brings you face to face with your finiteness, your vulnerability. That in itself doesn't seem very relevant to the spiritual life.  You may resist giving any kind of attention to the body because somewhere along the line you have learned to put the spiritual and the physical in separate compartments. You may believe that the spiritual journey takes place in a realm completely separate from the body.  But the truth is that the spiritual journey is taken in a physical body, and there is a very real connection between caring for our body and deepening our relationship with God"

"What a surprise," she goes on to write, "it has been to find that, in the mist of my spiritual journey, I have been forced to face my profound ambivalence about life in a body.  Intent on trying to live up to a misguided spiritual ideal, I had relegated life in the body to some lesser category that warranted very little attention."

So dancing for me is very metaphoric about the reality of trust.

So dancing for me is very metaphoric about the reality of trust.

Will I trust God? Do I trust God?

I've been on this journey, to I have known not where, but I have followed...  I followed when He spoke to enter and touch silence, solitude, REST.. I followed when He asked me to withdraw and followed Him into a secret garden where He wanted me to meet me as He knew me not as I had tried to refashion me....  I followed and remembered how much I loved that He was a dancer.  (Go read the lyrics to one of my favorite songs.) I followed and I discovered beauty and phenomenal grace and mercy, and the largeness of God and the both the smallness and largeness of humanity.  He is the dancer poet gardener.  He is utterly magnificent and He is the best teacher I have ever had.

The Samaria business has been very new and yet it is all He will say to me as I journey into unknown places, He will whisper, laugh, roar..  "Mims, I went to Samaria...  trust me there is much to be found and salvaged there.. GO!"

In realizing He was taking me new places I did what I would normally do, try and create a road map.  With each topic I would quickly go to Amazon.Com and purchase books on the topic, Google search quotes, grope for understanding.  He would thwart my efforts and each time a new book would arrive, He would graciously say, "No," or "please not now.. trust me."

Tonight as I read in Invitation to Solitude and Silence, I wept.  I wept.. because again very deliberately He showed me how He has been leading, teaching and instructing me... Passage after passage I would read words as if they were jumping up from pages of my own journal.  And my soul exhaled and exclaimed, "You are God! You are leading me."  The understanding of having asked for bread He would not give me a stone landed deep, and trust sunk ever deeper.

My Samarias will not be yours.. But they are places I journey where the religious crowds of the day say things like, "we don't go there," "we don't touch that," (that being a human being at times), "we don't ____________"

My Samarias are the places where religious fear and the hidden agenda of  spiritual superiority expresses that the "real" people of faith don't travel to such a place or do such a thing. 

So I am dancing upon my own fears and treading at time upon ground I wouldn't necessarily have found on my own, but my Lord has beckoned me to follow Him to the ends of the earth.. and that includes all the Samarias.

I didn't outgrow Walking the Passage per se, as much as I grew into a new place... a new passage that for now needed a new space..............  follow me here and like this blog and journey with me as we dance our way with the Lord of the Dance.  The light is increasing upon the way and the door is wide open for discovery.. Perfect love is casting out fear and bringing forth quite the journey.