Sore feet

I am reading, sipping tea, sore feet up in the air, my willful distraction from just one more statement about my thesis on ADHD. It struck me yesterday that I went from frozen feet to 'hot feet' in a matter of days. It is painful when I walk- this seems to be the code of conduct in this time here in Amsterdam. This time, instead of nerve damaged toes screaming to me from their place swathed in thick layers of socks and leather boots, my heels are swollen, raw, and feeling like someone took a hammer to them while I was asleep. Maybe they did. I am limping in the street, carrying my "Research Methods in Anthropology" binder with me. A daunting site I am sure.

But, today I am reading. Blissfully done with a moment of work. If you get a chance, there are some books I recommend to any spiritual seeker:

Shambhala, the sacred path of the warrior by Chogyam Trungpa

The Book of Hours by Leonard Cohen

(both of which I discovered as a teen and re-read and re-read prolifically)

and this new one:

An Altar in the World by Barbara Brown Taylor.

If you want to bypass all the jargonny stuff and dive into the meat, these are the chapters to read:

Shambhala: FEAR

Altar in the World: The practice of wearing skin

And, really, pick up ANY book of hours you can get your hands on. The Catholics have many. Cohen's is a nice physical and worldly alternative. Read the shortest passage. Some are a mere sentence. It will be the straightest arrow to the heart of your own mind and to the heart of God. The spiritual writers, they are good at that...

but I have to thank those who are good at pointing straight to the body as well. Straight to the skin, and the fear of living in it.

"Do we dismiss the body's wisdom because it does not use words?" Barbara tells me...

My feet are talking quite loudly to me right now- can I hear them? Can I hear my own thinking beyond words on a page and another paper sent for review by an advisor, a professor, a classmate? What am I listening to, exactly? Where is my wisdom located, if not in my body?

Is this not the same with children? Adults are great at writing spiritual epithets about how children bring them closer to God... you know, if you just hold that sleeping child, you will discover something. And I have to agree.

But then we turn around, and when that sleeping child wakes up and has just toilet papered the house, ran their toy (or real) car through the wall, or threatened to walk out just one more time, we forget all about God and get angry in our bodies. Our feet hurt. And so do our heads. We feel so far from God or ourselves in that moment all we want to do is forget... forget that moment ever happened, and keep another from happening again.

But what if we listen... like to my aching feet, my sore shins. What if we tune in?

"Kids act things out. Adults discuss them." turn to page 49, please, in the chapter on wearing skin.

I pause over this page. I linger.

I had just finished my hesitant argument over why my thesis has taken this turn, my thesis writing is still not bold yet, but it is growing:

it is the adults who diagnose kids that I am interested in.

What meanings do the diagnoses hold for them? And how do they talk about it?

I have rarely seen a kid begging to be diagnosed with anything- a sore throat, let alone a disease or disorder, especially one that makes them feel a bit funny about the skin they are in. We are the ones who leap for categories... we are discussing. But our kids are acting... and their words are just as loud as ours, if we can hear what they are saying.

But here is the risk: what if we don't like it? What if I don't like my hurting heels or the fact I am limping? What if I don't like what my body tells me? What if I don't like what the kids are saying? That this world has changed maybe... that fitting in or making sense of it means something else, on a new level, of which us adults may not have an understanding.

Darwin suggested genes mutate to adapt to changes in environment, and these mutations change into a new species of being over time. What changes is our world going through, how do our children have to adapt, and mutate even, that we did not have to?

And, what scares us about that? Where is the fear in our bodies, in our minds, our heads? Where do we control, and what do we dread?

Where can we listen, that we have not dared to yet?

I am back off my seat and behind the computer once again. I feel quite strapped to this thing this year in Amsterdam... when I am not thesis-ing away at my abstract thinking I am blogging away in abstract reality, or Skyping away with my thread of connection to Utah, and the kids and challenges that fuel me. I am listening to my feet- that brought me here, that will carry me to the next destination, and the next and the next, even if they are sore- or screaming...