Sitting inside as a spiritual hazard

On Ian's first day of kindergarten, he looked at me defiantly, crossed his arms, and said, "I am NOT going to kindergarten!"

"Why not?" I asked, genuinely surprised. This was the first I'd heard of his opposition to attending school.

"Because if I go to kindergarten, I'll have to sit all day. If I sit all day, I'll have to get a job where I sit all day."

We have such insight into ourselves and what makes us happy when we are children. As a girl, when it came time to go to Sunday school, I longed instead to sit under a tree, or to wander in nature. The irony is that as an adult, I chose a career that landed me smack dab in church every Sunday, and many other days a week, working as a campus minister for a small Catholic university.

Ian's surprising arrival into my life before I was married in the church blasted me right out of the chapel and into the wilderness that many thoughtful, educated, and young-ish parents find themselves in. Nothing quite fits, no institution can claim my full allegiance, but I yearn to give my son something--a real appreciation for life and living things, a sense of being deeply loved and worthwhile, an abiding optimism in the goodness of life, and a sense of meaning beyond materialism and the race to be a big deal in the eyes of the world.

We don't go to church. Ian's allergic to sitting, and I am allergic to being inside. A wise friend once told me, "You've got to do what comes naturally. You've got to do what brings you into the living flow of the breath of God." I'm still working on understanding, much less living, this statement, but it strikes me as deeply true.

I don't sit much anymore, except when I am writing. As it turns out, I'm not a good sitter, even in mediation. So active meditation it is for me, working in the garden, canning foods, bringing water to animals and bees, cooking, making chalkboards and beeswax modeling clay. My worship is to stay as present as I can in each task, while drinking in the warmth of the sun, the smell of the damp earth, the color of the sunset, or the songs of the birds.

Religion means literally "to bind back." In a sense, all religion is about remembering--where we came from, what we have forgotten--in order to move forward. But I like to think of religion as re-membering, the process of reclaiming all the parts of ourselves that have been cut off, broken, or forgotten, and in so doing, being restored to our original wholeness or "holiness"-- that state of natural, childlike connection with God.

We're on a journey, and this religion thing isn't done with me yet. But for now, being immersed in the natural world, its seasons and rhythms, its power and majesty, its abundance and scarcity, feels like the Sunday school I've been seeking for a good many years.