BEING HUMAN

There were three of us—Artist. Professor. Chef. I proposed, “Of body, mind, or spirit, which drives the decisions of your days?”

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Body. Mind. SPIRIT. The last one made bigger for emphasis; this is what drives me. Every decision, poured out like liquid, fluid and nonconforming, fills the tiny cracks and crevices that being [imperfectly] human makes.

I TAKE COMFORT IN THE IMPERFECTION, IN THE REVELATION THAT WE ARE INDEFINABLE IN OUR DESIGN, EVEN TO THE DEGREE THAT WE ARE A MYSTERY TO OURSELVES MOST OF THE TIME.

We are, every one of us, a composition of the three. How is it, then, that we are so different from one another in the way we perceive a universe that extends beyond how far we can reach?

You would imagine, with so much motivation to do so, that I would be obsessed with the Body part of this triad. Perhaps, I would not be in my current situation if I had been. And yet, the Spirit part that drives and defines me, demands that I see what is—cancer—not as some unwelcome dis-ease but an opening up, an intersection, between where Heaven and Earth meet.

THIS IS THE DEFINITION OF THE INDEFINABLE, THE MYSTERY OF THE ILLOGICAL, THE WELCOMING OF THE WHITE SPACE WHERE WORDS ARE A JARRING INTRUSION IN THE SERENITY OF SOMETIMES SIMPLY LETTING THINGS BE. 

Still, I understand the necessity of allowing the full-force measure of Body and Mind to have their way:

Three of us, in the same car, being pulled toward a particular destination. Yet our trajectory is not the same. We talk at length. Then, long silence to allow what bubbles up to be articulated and accurately framed [the wisdom of the silence cannot be overstated]. And then more questions and conversation came:

Which do you allow to navigate your hours and your days—
Is yours a reverence for intellect that evaluates, contemplates, and explains?
Are you driven by the physical, aligning to what the body needs, desires, craves?
Or do you long for something inexplicable, elusive, unseen?

NOW I ASK, OF BODY. MIND. SPIRIT, WHICH IS THE AUTHOR OF YOUR DAYS?
WHICH OCCUPIES THE LARGER FONT NEXT TO YOUR NAME?

Some would say all three. I contend, while we dedicate inordinate amounts of time to attending to the nature of our bodies and the wanderings of our brains, our collective spirit muscle has become atrophied.

HAVE WE MISSED THE POINT IN MARVELING THAT GOD BECAME FLESH, RATHER THAN PRESSING INTO THE NOTION THAT WE ARE ALL SPIRIT HAVING A HUMAN EXPERIENCE?

If I asked you to define Spirit, you might find it difficult to do. But I’m asking anyway. Because the whole of you is waiting, the most breathtaking part of you may yet to be seen.

NOTES:
My mama experienced what I named her "breathless passing." Her departure was fast and furious, difficult and traumatic. The result of being with her constantly in those last seven weeks was a sense of overarching loss, not only of her, but of me. 

In those nights after her "missing" the nightmares came and with them, a sense that she was dying a multitude of deaths, over and over again.

The came a particular experience that I can only describe as a "visitation." I was asleep and yet awake and my mama came to me. She was fully whole. Smiling...even laughing as she approached. And breathtaking. 
She sat on the edge of my bed and asked me to consider how I wanted to live my days, and she used very specific words. "Do you want to live your life in the physical world, or bathed in the unseen?" 
"In the unseen," she admonished, "is where the supernatural lives...and this is where the essence of everything is." 

Live in the unseen, she had said. And I listened.

This is how define the Spirit in all of us—the place where the essence of us [as divine creation] resides. 


How do you define the Spirit part of you? 
Is it the way you notice the details or the way you love others in all that you are and do?

Imagine a dilemma you recently encountered—
Did you reason your way through it?
Did you take a long run or comfort-eat?
Did you give breath to the situation and allow the answer to organically come? 

How you live your life, day-to-day, is revelatory. Are you missing the most important part of who you are? Body. Mind. SPIRIT. Becoming aware of the hierarchy of your personal operating system changes how you experience life. 

The balance of the three is everything, particularly when placed in context of a world that so rarely regards the importance of Spirit in the way we humans perceive and interact with the rest of our world.