Boundary Living

In my life, I have often been less than successful at integrating the many aspects of my Self that comprise my wholeness. The closest I feel I came to this for any length of time was during my seminary program when I was simultaneously training so hard in karate. I was faced with weekly assignments for my ministerial training as well as attending karate classes most days. It kept me well grounded in both and also kept, well, the body, mind, and spirit parts of what makes me this person fairly well intertwined. It was not something I did by design but it was a very good plan I was living.

In the years since ordination and my first black belt, I have shifted between these different focuses at different times and have felt it hard to keep them balanced. I am aware, now, that I need to make a more conscious effort to reintroduce the interdependence of my 'Selves' or risk losing some part of me that I hold as precious.

It's easy to focus on the body right now. I'm eating a very specific diet. I am working on getting into a regular workout plan with my boyfriend the trainer. It is easier to focus on my mind than it has been at some other times in my life. I have evidently gained some skill in watching my tendency toward habitual reaction to old triggers. That has been helpful in the relating with Frank. I have a daily mantra practice that is also working on my thinking. Spirituality, it would seem, would be easy as well. For me, though, spiritual practice isn't just about my recitations or going to church.

When I decided to become an ordained minister, survived three years of training for that, and then took vows and received the mantle of ordination, my spiritual practice became a quality of how I engage people. What I know is that it is very easy to not share that I'm a minister and enjoy the freedom with being seen as laity. I don't think that I am special or different because I'm a minister. That is not the point. The point is that other people expect me to be different or special and it feels like a constant battle to convince people that isn't true. I'm not even a Christian. That is a conversation I could live without having ever again. The other thing that it means is that my vows are easier to shift to the side.

These vows are also somewhat illusive. My instructor can't even tell me what they were because of a missing file. I sometimes wish for a printed list. As the recent class of ordained went through their own vows, I said yes inwardly to their promises for myself. I don't remember the words. Ego is involved two ways that I can identify here. The first is in obscuring the words from my memory. The second is by constantly nagging me that I need an external compass to know how to love people when, in fact, that is our most basic human function when we truly connect with each other.

Being so nicely nestled in a relationship makes it easy to want to turn completely towards that wonder and to turn my back on what's outside of it... what seems less safe or savory or comfortable. As it is, my boyfriend, my church, my Self, my friends... all are reminders that I vowed to myself and to others to engage life in a different way when I accepted that mantle. It was a very real thing that happened the day of ordination and my re-affirming those vows means doing my do, so to speak.

I don't know how this will unfold, exactly. I realize that it's easier to not engage woowoo things with Frank because he's a science guy and I can just not talk about things like Reiki and energy and intuition even though he constantly brings them up. I have developed hedging skills that would serve me well as a politician. I am really quite good at just acting like I don't hear questions.

I am now adding to my to-do list two workshops in 2010. I am working on curriculum and materials and they will be taught at The Church Within. Yvonne told me to. She's good at this game. This will be a spring board towards engaging my spiritual life in a way that I look forward to.

It is exciting to step off the boundary that I have perceived separating these 'parts' and diving into the vast ocean that is their inseparable reality.