As human beings, so much of our day is run on auto-pilot. We perform amazing tasks without hardly a thought at all. Consider the task of walking. Only a stroke survivor can truly appreciate the delicate balance, the intricate coordination of muscles and timing that make up a stroll across the room. Walking is an incredibly complex task. It requires precision, even when clumsy. From heel to toe it is a marriage between gravity and grace. We learn to walk before we have developed the ability to graft short-term memory to long-term sense of self. So we can't remember how difficult it was to learn those baby steps. Now, as adults, most of us meander along without a thought. We are bipedal gods.
I've been fortunate enough to avoid having a stroke (so far), but I do have some sense of how complicated this whole ambulating business can be...
When I was in high school, I sustained a knee injury playing football. I tore some cartilege in my right knee. The skillful orthopod was able to repair it. My leg was placed in a brace that gave my leg a decidedly bionic look, and I had to use crutches for several weeks. I was told to keep my leg from bending or extending very much. It wasn't long that I forgot the ease of regular ambulation. I had to sit on the bleachers during gym class and watch as my friends played basketball or dodgeball. When the time came for me to take off my brace, I found a grotesquely atrophied limb that I was a little afraid to trust. My healthy leg was still muscular and toned, but my wounded leg was shriveled and weak in comparison. After quite a bit of physical therapy, and gingerly testing my ability to walk unaided with crutches, I eventually came to walk thoughtlessly again. There are Buddhists monks that would tsk tsk me for celebrating this quality of walking. After all, walking meditation is an ancient practice that can be quite rewarding. But for a fella to get a break from mindful walking is its own special boon.
It's not just walking. There's swallowing. Speech pathologists could tell you how complex that is... the perfect flexing of muscles that allow food to pass through the esophagus rather than the trachea. There's our heart, which beats to the drum of our brain stem. The life-giving twist of this muscle flushes oxygenated blood throughout the entire body without my giving it a second thought.
But we already know all this, don' we? Where's the novelty in a wonderment at our bodies? St. Paul taught that our bodies are temples... sacred ground. On a cellular level, its a sacred metropolis... a massive, inner world. It's not a new thought, but I confess that I'm still impressed. It's a world that runs without me having to think about it.
There's plenty than runs without much thought... Remember that night you lunged into your first kiss? Or when someone leaned in and stole one from you? There's the lips which find yours, and the genius of our love (or lust) takes over. I think that the really good kissers are the ones who pay attention, but who don't over think it. Someone could probably write an algorithm for the perfect kiss, but such a thing is sterile. Early in your kissing career, you lean in and hope for the best. As the years go by, you learn to trust the poetry of touch. You give yourself to an ebb and flow, and the miracle just happens. One could same is true for prayer...
I was fifteen when I got my first real kiss. My girlfriend was sitting on the sofa beside me at my house. My parents were not around. I had Planes, Trains, and Automobiles playing on the VCR. I put my arm behind her head, and there it rested, atop the ridge of the sofa for nearly an hour. At some point, with my heart beating faster than I could ever consciously pump it, I slowly plunged into her lips with mine. She received me, welcomed me, and I nearly swooned in utter disbelief at how good her mouth tasted. I had spent the whole movie thinking, wondering, "How will I start this kiss?" But I lost my conscious self once the kissing began. My intellect evaporated. It's only when the kissing becomes bland that you begin thinking again... making grocery lists or thinking about what chores need doing.
As a philosophy major, and as a graduate of a Divinity School rather insistent upon critical, reflective thinking, I am actually a huge fan of cogitation. Without an ability to focus, to absorb, to categorize and assess, we live as infants in our world. We don't invent antibiotics, or airplanes, or great literature. Nine out of ten times, I recommend thinking.
But sometimes its our impulses that make life worth living. This exists quite powerfully with people. The precognitive attraction we feel to someone, not simply on a sexual level, but also on an emotional and spiritual level, is a force that exists underneath our conscious thoughts. When we finally become attuned to the undercurrent, the shock is wonderful. We've found a friend, a lover, a home.
Or we find God... are found by God. We will never do a math problem or solve a logic puzzle that allows us to grasp hold of the Holy in any conscious way. It's been long known among mystics that if we know anything of God, if we knock on the sky and receive an answer, it is because God chose to open the door, and not because of the facility of our knocking. There may be something said for simply showing up on the doorstep, however.
The humbling truth is that our souls are wiser than we often realize. So many of our crucial moments consist of awaking to realities that have long awaited us. We often miss truth by over-thinking, by trying to "apprehend" what Nature will only give according to its own pleasure. We are better off learning from those fishermen who cast their nets and wait. We open hearts and minds, willing to gingerly reflect upon life as it comes, and maybe... just maybe... God will come to us in that open space.
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