Everyday at the end of yoga class, I have a lot of energy and fight to bring myself to lay there after the class is over for the suggested 3-5 minutes. I do know jumping right up and running out into the cold lobby is not a good idea, so I had to devise a way to keep myself still for a few minutes. I decided I’d close my eyes and recite the Lord’s Prayer. Now, I can recite that in less than ten seconds, so clearly I needed some rules to this new ritual. In addition to reciting it slowly and with meaning, I decided I had to visualize each sentence in my mind. That did the trick. It keeps me in place on that mat for just enough time to loose that urge to jump up and run, allowing me to relax for a few minutes.
The best picture I enjoy during the prayer is the part that says “give us this day our daily bread”. Since I was five years old I’ve always had the same picture of a perfect slice of white bread (a huge one) sliding out from an opening in the sky. Of course, at five, the only meaning I could derive from that picture was that God would give me food everyday so I wouldn’t starve to death.
Today that “food” idea is extremely different. In the month or so that I have been using the prayer, I began to see a little pattern where somehow, someway, each day God would drop “food” along my path, usually in the form of a concept or idea that helped me with whatever life situation I was currently wrestling with.
Just looking back over this past week, I began to picture slices of bread with messages written on them. Then I realized I would like to save the “bread slices” so I can use them as affirmations in weak moments. In any learning, growing, self-actualization journey we get excited when we stumble on a helpful concept, it boosts us up for a few days, then we lose it just in time for that weak moment when we find ourselves falling and revisiting our problem.
My remedy is a daily bread journal. Everyone knows I write everything on my phone, but for this I’m going to use actual paper because I want to draw the slices of bread and write on them. Some of the slices for this past week were:
-letting go doesn’t mean giving up
-in spite of your fear, do what you have to do
-after you’ve done all you can, just stand
They came from quotes, cards, and songs dropped in front of me just when I needed them. But now it’s Friday and as I reflect on my week, it would be nice to be able to quickly flip through a book and be reminded of what God had taught me this week. Also, drawing the bread, coloring the brown crust, getting the angle right, and writing on it will reinforce the words deeper because I’ll have to concentrate on them a lot longer than if I just wrote them on my phone.
Using the Lord’s Prayer to keep me on that mat everyday just may result in another very useful book.
And so, as another day goes by, I believe in Jesus, Bikram, and a good bottle of wine – not a bad way to roll, and.. I have written.
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