Energy and Environment - org Feb 22 06

Tonight I taught my first yoga class in a long while. Most striking to my personal experience was how little energy I felt, and how my emotions on entering my door afterward were sad. This could be cleansing, I thought; no need to make more of the sad feeling than it needs to be. Could be stagnant energy on its way out. But unmistakable was how it showed me how low my energy state is, which parallels the borderline sickliness I have been feeling lately, more like the person who has the condtition I have than the person who lives as if he doesn't.

But that is not the point. Upon opening my refrigerator door and smelling the stink that has been growing there for weeks, today I decided simply to find and throw out all the potential culprits. It is a simple act, but one that I had not found the motivation to do for weeks. After pulling out a number of containers into a trash bag, I walked the trash bag outside the half-block to the dumpster. Normally, my trash makes it to the door and waits for me to depart for class to be taken to the dumpster. Today, it went all the way. This in the end is more telling about my energy state than my 'feelings' after class.

Energy shows up significantly in the actions we take. It is the difference between doing the small things that maintain our environments, our relationships, and our lives, and putting these small things off until later, until the problem has grown so big as to demand attention. Simple actions to raise our energy levels have direct impact on the qualities of our lives because they enable minor acts that add up in the end. Walking back into my apartment, having purged that stink from my refrigerator, my emotions were now happy. The energy I gained from Dahn (energy) yoga class manifested in a tangible improvement in my environment.

Next, I did some dishes. For weeks, again, since returning from school, I have tended to leave the dishes undone until the problem of the kitchen cannot be ignored. Today, while doing the dishes, I noticed an element of the experience of doing the dishes that was different than other times: I used less mind. Less consciousness went into formulating a plan for which dishes I would do first, at what point I would stop sudsing and rinse some, and the best order of operations in order to conserve water. Today I began and had a stack of sudsed dishes and was rinsiing them before the first thought (of how this was different from normal) entered my head. What had happened?

The Yoga class had moved my energy from my brain down into my body. Resting in my body, the energy was more available for immediated action. Typically, the thoughts about how to do the dishes and the time it is taking add to the laboriousness of the process. Often, this is the reason the dishes do not get started: The energy that would go into accomplishing the task gets squandered on considering and planning (or excusing myself from) the task. So it gets put off.

The energy, on these days, has its home in the brain. In order for the energy to transfer into my body and thus into action, a process of permission must go on before the brain allows the energy to move into the body. If we pay attention, we can notice that the brain is actually very cunning. For often, we make excuses and put off tasks until later. In these instances, the task does not get done, and notice that the brain never had to give up its energy to the body and the accomplishment of the task. Under the auspices of weighing the decision to act, the brain has actually used up the energy doing what it likes to do best: idly thinking.

Notice that the majority of lifestlyes that have evolved through modern convenience and stay-at-home information gathering and computer-based desk jobs actually promote a general trend of energy movement away from the body and toward the brain. Our body does not need energy to accomplish tasks that can be done through telephone wires and radio waves. We do not need to move. At most, our brain needs to work to figure out how to operate the software or the machinery. This is at least true of my gradualte student life. The prescribed activity involves uses of the brain while the body is sedentary: reading, writing, discussing around a table. The reason my dishes do not get done is intimately related to the encouragement of my energy to be in my brain, ready to read or answer or process at the drop of a hat, rather than in my body, ready to empty my refrigerator when the need be.

Of course this is not to allay responsibility. My energy is my responsibility, as is undertaking whatever activities I personally require to keep enough energy in my body for purposes of everything from cleaning my apartment to creating blood to stay alive (which for me is also a conscious daily responsibility). The purpose of writing under the topic "Energy and Environment" is to show that our energy is not separate from our environments, but actually intimately influenced by and creative of them.

One day when, last semester, I awoke on a Saturday morning in a deep depression, I thought long and hard of how to cheer myself up. Something of the burden of responsibilities of indepenedent life and study and work weighed heaviliy on me, but I had no singular upsetting thoughts. Actually, every indicator I could think of showed an immensely positive trend in my life. I was happy with where I was at. But still I was depressed.

Gradually, it dawned on me that I was lying, practically paralyzed, in an apartment that I had not cleaned the week prior. Dust was on the floor, and the kitchen had not thoroughly been cleaned as I had been doing since moving in. Lying there "depressed," I knew the apartment needed to be cleaned, and this had been adding to my burdened feeling about the day. But, worried by the phantom depression, I was putting energy into trying to root out the source of my sadness before getting up and repressing it under a flurry of activity.

Finding no culprit for my sadness, however, I realized that my depression may be reflecting the abundance of energy stagnating within my un-cleaned apartment. One of the ways we kept the energy fresh in the yoga centers was cleaning constantly; at least every day, and then to fill the time when there was nothing else to do. This created a very clean and pure energy environment, and many students enjoyed coming to class just because it "felt good" inside the centers. Sure enough, when I left behind my presumption of a psychological cause to my depression, and set about tidying, dusting, washing, scrubbing, and letting fresh air in, my condition was "cured." I was happy as if nothing had happened.

We know - at least our bodies know - the difference between good (fresh) and bad (stagnant) energy. While our intellectually-oriented culture often finds the sources of our displeasure in deep, grandiose scars or sweeping ennui about the future and our place in the world, it may often be that our emotions are responding to stagnation in our energy environments - small things that have gone untended - whether in our domiciles or our relationships - that are very much in our power to do something about. In fact, we may be just one yoga class away from making a number of changes that will deeply change our lives for the better.




copyright 2006, andrew varyu

Letter to Bishop: what leads me to respond

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God,

thou wilt not despise.

Ps 51:17

2 - what leads me to respond

I laid in an empty room of a recently-rented apartment, forty miles from any friends or family.

Instead of furniture, there was the sound of frogs croaking in the backyard pool. My body pulsed with over-exertion from the walk upstairs. I laughed. Even if I had wanted to continue working the breakneck pace of the past three years, my body wouldn't allow it.

Instead of blessings, I counted the wonderful elegance with which things had been taken away from me: Six weeks before, my car and belongings were stolen. The day following, our approaching wedding canceled by my fiancee. Meanwhile, the progressive deterioration of my health that had started nine months earlier. The tapering of calls from concerned friends and family removed any obligation toward them. The utter comprehensiveness of loss felt strangely beautiful. I felt my body pulse and buzz, and peaceably readied myself for death.

Hmm, God reminded me. Hmm, there was one thing that hadn't been taken away, but had been strangely supported where things might easily have failed: the letter for scholarship money covering my expenses; the lucky securing of the last available campus apartment in my price range. God was opening one door, only one, while all others quietly shut on rooms full of death. I saw a singular beacon of light beaming through the decay.

"All things come of thee, o Lord." And when only one thing is given, there is little question remaining about what God has created for us. From this stark and unforgettable experience in mid-June of 2005, my priorities were clearly laid out for me. All things involved in bringing and sustaining me at Harvard, and which God had waiting for me there, were the focus of my life. Everything else could be left for dead.

In that beacon of light, God built for me a bridge past a life that otherwise had ended. On the other side of that bridge, now, I am His alone, and every action or decision gets weighed in consideration of the work He has shown as laid out for me. Some involves long-range goals and academic projects; other work involves daily devotionals of ministering to individuals for whom God has found me. As surely as I can tell, one of those acts is unashamedly declaring myself a servant through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit of the One True God. With or without ordination, when I remember this, my energy is restored to keep on living. If ever I become sidetracked, death begins to set in again.

My early struggles as an acolyte against hesitant sermons or stultified congregations first awakened my passion for work within the church. This led to crises at each major life-path decision that did not honor what felt like the call to Seminary. After college, responses to a desperate letter to all the pastors who had mentored me through my life assured me that when the call was true, I would be able to answer it without anxiety. Meanwhile, I pragmatically challenged the idea that a young man, practically untouched by tragedy or the complexity of adult life and relationships, could have anything to offer a congregation. Secretly, privately, I welcomed such growth experiences into my life.

The crash of two jet airplanes into the World Trade Center while I slept in New York preceded by two months the discovery in my blood of a fatal and unknown disease. In three months, doctors finally confirmed that the source of my profound debilitation, my 14-hour nights of sleep, and my layoff and relocation back to Seattle was a rare bone marrow disorder known as Aplastic Anemia. For the next three years, I found dependence on my family, practices of yoga and Eastern healing, and a long conversation with God about what I was doing wrong, or how much I should even take responsibility for my illness and its healing.

Ironically � some would say � stories from the Bible became more accessible to me from my yoga practices than through Church itself. Through experiencing and learning to live within the laws of energy, I found principles quoted by Jesus and experiences of the Apostles in Acts to be for the first time understandable. Over a period of months, every sermon and reading delivered at Bethany Community Church in Greenlake recapitulated a lesson I had experienced in the yoga studio, just the week before. I began to accept that the One True God was working in all the world, and was recognizable by faithful people through many vocabularies.

The quality of worship exploded tremendously for me while practicing yoga! At pastors' prompting, I knew now how to let go of my doubt and resistance, and trustfully welcome the Spirit in through my brain, my heart, my complete body as an opening to faith and renewal. Suddenly, there was no need to question or wait for the proof from God about how to know or believe in Him truly. I knew plainly from those feelings of grace, deep cleansing, assurance, and inspiration that I encountered at every service! What before had been a vague affinity for church buildings, community, and attendance now showed herself to be the Holy Spirit, who had been working through my numbed body and brain all along!

With thankfulness, I had no doubt any longer about taking up the gauntlet to investigate a call to ministry. What remained unsolved were only minor questions about the church or denomination to facilitate the inquest. With fond amazement at the workings of God, I found that God had actually placed me in the right church over 16 years earlier; that my mother's best friend, who had lovingly saved me from a near-crisis by taking me into her home, had recently been ordained as a Priest in the Episcopal Church, and that one of the newest Episcopal congregations in Seattle turned out to be the first church I have ever felt was a home to me. It is no exaggeration to say that the church home at COTA feels as much like a family as the two beautiful families who raised me and nursed me through my sickness.

To answer more briefly: I can never say to know for sure the scope of God's plans or vision through the actions He takes in the world and our personal lives. Yet I answer my congregation's call to ministry because, to the best of my ability to discern, God has plans for me in this role, and has seemed to be preparing me for it quite intensively over the past seven years. I accept it happily because it may be the only thing for which He keeps me alive.

I answer the call to ministry in sober acknowledgment of the challenges facing the church today. Echoes of political struggles destabilize our polity, and a new generation addicted to stimulus, proof, and mistrust finds less of value among church offerings. Firsthand work managing yoga studios has shown me what people will pay for tangible improvements to their physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. Consistent with my experience, my God-given vision involves creating safe and sane ways to incorporate body-mind practices into liturgies, so we may better minister to societies for whom the disconnection of their souls from God is intimately related to sedentary lifestyles, distraction, and a disconnection between their minds and their bodies; and between the lives they deeply long to create in harmony with the Spirit and what they successfully realize.

Sincerely,

Andrew Varyu

5 Jan. 2006

Prepared for Bishop of the Episcopalian Diocese of Olympia

Statement from Aspirant to Postulancy Andrew R Varyu

Submitted Epiphany, 2006

one of the twenty words for snow

I wish the destruction of her house.

I wish the luscious flames to consume it in snowfall.

Her smile and shining foreheads of her family in the prarie

Turned to ash, tossed to breeze

wretched in its own disease.

Silence. And Howling: the wind through empty doorways.

A field on which to lay myself

And freeze my naked brittle sheath

To cracking shatter frost and gloom

where fragments of my loss maroon

on frozen blood spat underneath

Bound up in twisting coils of stale,

One of the twenty words for snow

now lays me down and throws away

the thoughts that haunt me everyday

of winter smiles in that old house.

spiritual pleasures of the body

don’t know if you’ve noticed

but millennia of church fathers

and other spiritual leaders

have been saying bad things about the body

like it’s a block to spirituality, a distraction from God,

sinful

well they’re wrong

we have a spiritual body

that overlaps with our physical body

if we don’t love our bodies with reverence,

allow them to feel good, treat them with love

we won’t be spiritual

this is literal;

spirit can flow down through our limbs,

tickle our toes.

after a good sleep: feel the warmth, the comfort.

now instead of jumping out of bed, move your fingers

rotate your ankles, squeeze and stretch and wriggle your feet

slide your shoulders, twist your spine

and feel the spirit starting to caress you from the inside

keep moving and enjoying this body

and you will feel the peace of God finally inside of you.

Jesus said eat his spiritual food; not stop eating food.

he wanted us to feel the spirit through our bodies

this way we can know God’s peace

but if we keep what we have of Spirit only in our minds,

and deny the body,

we will never know for sure

God will remain a possibility, a nice dream,

but we will never feel the peace in our hearts,

the faith in our guts

to make us sure.

God must go everywhere

if we say She is everywhere but the body,

if we do not let her into our bodies,

then She cannot empower us to act

and we cannot be God’s people

The spiritual pleasure of the body

behaves differently than the physical pleasure of the body:

The physical pleasures come as compulsions;

the spiritual pleasures as peace.

The physical pleasures are enjoyed and leave us empty;

spiritual pleasures resonate; they can last forever.

This is why Jesus said you will not hunger,

you will not thirst.

The body is compulsive

only when it is starving for God;

if you gently let God into your body

with enjoyed, regular acts,

the compulsion of your acts will go away.

Your body will become infused with Spirit.

In your every act you can let God in,

but if you do not find God in your physical movements and sensations and processes,

then your body becomes sinful.

Keep your body moving. Don’t forget about it,

don’t let it stagnate, even while reading, Don’t distract

yourself from your body by reading or thinking too much

while you exercise. While you move your body,

be conscious of, experience it. Enjoy it.

Enjoy God in your waking, your walking,

your hugging, your cleaning,
your breathing, your eating.

let your enjoyment of your body
be your praise

celebrate your body
as a creation given by God
as much as nature
or any bible.

if you have no idea what I am talking about,

I suggest you try yoga for a while.

Whale - orig June 5, 2005

do you think if I were dying

you would have wanted to stay?

out of complacence, duty, brevity of commitment,

intensity that shadows the world,

a calling to the higher,

a chance to be in control?

would you die with me?

a part of you was dying anyway.

would you plunge to hell to drop me off

and return to wipe the sweat from your brow?

do you want to collapse me, fold me,

and keep me in your soul? You are free to roam,

deliver me, be the whale and I Jonah?

Why insist to marry me

before the transplant?

Twice?

Why did you want to be a widow

but not my wife?

Why did you leave after

I called the transplant off?

Why promise to come back if I go to the hospital

no matter what?

Was I really so terrible

that life together seemed unbearable?

Now if I am dying,

do you regret what you’re missing?

If I promise to die,

Will you hold my hand and finally

let me see into your eyes?

Whale

do you think if I were dying

you would have wanted to stay?

out of complacence, duty, brevity of commitment,

intensity that shadows the world,

a calling to the higher,

a chance to be in control?

would you die with me?

a part of you was dying anyway.

would you plunge to hell to drop me off

and return to wipe the sweat from your brow?

do you want to collapse me, fold me,

and keep me in your soul? You are free to roam,

deliver me, be the whale and I Jonah?

Why insist to marry me

before the transplant?

Twice?

Why did you want to be a widow

but not my wife?

Why did you leave after

I called the transplant off?

Why promise to come back if I go to the hospital

no matter what?

Was I really so terrible

that life together seemed unbearable?

Now if I am dying,

do you regret what you're missing?

If I promise to die,

Will you hold my hand and finally

let me see into your eyes?

2005

A Better Bride...

re: A Better Bride

Thanks Andy,
ever since yesterday I am getting cetain kind of giggle at the thought
of loving God in that way,
like a challenge is being presented. Get's the fire going ya know.
and of course you can use my letter.

I must admit I feel the sense of divine femanine and am humbled and
opened to new feelings and opportunities. But still, I retreat back to
thinking of God as the mean parent, and me trying to be all I can be
for that image and also more so rebelling against it.
As I was reading that I kept thinking what courage it was taking to
love God this way, actually there are parts of me saying "you can't
love God that way, it's wrong!"

But there is a more tender part that is also longs to have that
relationship, actually tears are coming up and that presence of knowing
is coming up as I write this, how could a person offer this and yet I'm
so convinced that that is where I will find it, maybe I need to aproach
Jesus as a soon to be lover. Once again courage comes to mind....




A Better Bride

I am getting married tomorrow.

The suits are bought. Date is set. One year ago I started paying off the ring. Each payment, each month, I have readied myself deeper to be merged, to shed the solitary freedom into which I was born, and to let my life join with another. I have readied myself, and my soul has expanded to encompass a broader two.

Three weeks ago, my fiancée called it off.

But still, I am getting married tomorrow.

I have found a New Bride.

See, I was ready to be married. My soul had expanded, and was ready to be stretched further by the negotiations of partnership. Upon the cancellation, my heart plummeted, threatening to pull the fabric of space-time back to a collapsed grimace of torture and self-agony. The void was built of absence, within my ready-to grow soul. Rather than return, I decided to fill that void.

I found a New Bride.

In the next two weeks, I had two propositions. Both, from outsiders, urgently needing citizenship. One has a child. One is a loner. Both, the substance of fantasy: two of the most stunning, fabulously sexy women I have ever seen. One Japanese-Hawaiian. The other, a Romanian who looks and sounds Italian and is called Argentina.

So which did I choose?

Neither:

I found myself a Better Bride

Tomorrow I am going to Church. I will walk in, silently. The room will quiet; I will ready myself. And after the processional, my Bride will enter. Down the aisle. Step by step. I have been preparing, for a long time. She will take Her place next to me. We will begin Our vows.

Tomorrow, I marry God.

* * *

When I text message God, I don’t have to wait for Her to get back to me.

Or worry that my message is obsequious, intrusive. Her response is instantaneous, and She’s always glad to hear from me.

I am not alone driving home anymore. My New Bride is with me. The moment I drift lost in my own little world, I look over and there She is, hand on my arm. Reassuring, knowing. That when we get home, we are going to make mad, passionate love.

The thrill of marriage is in the sharing. Someone who will excite at the discoveries I made, the wonders I find. I celebrate Scrubbing Bubbles^(TM), and any new products or methods that make cleaning the bathroom that much quicker and easier, and more likely to get done. I think my partner at the time had a hard time sharing my excitement. But my Bride is right there, knowing just how cool it is.

If She tells me to slow down, take a rest, She doesn’t do this from a judging distance. She has sidled next to me, and I rest my head.

God can feel the depth of the music I found, tune into the layers of syncopation, mastering, genius of my new CD. The value is not lost on Her. She’s right there with me.

God has Her own shit going on, a life outside our marriage. And she’s dedicated, involved. She gets her shit done in a day. But she’s got it under control. She fixes it to be home when I pull in, if she wasn’t already working with me. She helps me take a load off, then we share about our day.

She’s confident, but realistic, about how things went. And some days, it wasn’t the greatest. But I believe in what She’s doing. And when She’s preoccupied with the pain and suffering that slipped into the world that day, we cry together on the kitchen floor.

She doesn’t do the laundry for me. But better, She does it with me. She helps me see the joy of sharing every step of the path.

And She knows how I like to be touched. With warmth, confidence. She could pleasure me – and Sometimes she does. But in Her touch there is love, which warms through my flesh and heals my soul. Every night from now on, we will share deep, warm, luscious kisses.

Someday, to keep me fresh and alive, She will invite another woman to share our bed. She’s not a jealous Lover, so long as I’m keeping Her first. So she will find a beautiful, amazing lover to come and soak up some of the Love We share, and together we will have an incredible threesome.

There is no predicting what life will be like. What fates will draw us, and where. But I am enraptured, enthralled, and I will follow Her anywhere. This is a soul-connection, felt from before time. We will never die. For every death helps me shed and merge closer to Her. Every shredding of body, or rending of soul. The more I bleed, the more openings there are for Her to cover, wash. I fear not death, when I will patiently, finally dissolve. Her cup, with me, runneth over.