Mondays with Niko: Talking about Oliver Sacks and Depression

     Another coffee and granola morning after a good yoga class, practicing gratitude. In yoga this morning, I requested the circle that has always been for me the metaphor for community since I first started practicing with Ellin last March.  I've practiced yoga (really, off and on) for over 30 years--and no matter the kind, style, teacher, aapproach, city, it seems that we will always do balancing poses, always the tree. In this class, we stand in a circle, palms touching palms, leaning on the shoulder of our friend (as Ellin refers to those on either side of us) until we achieve our position, then standing tall in an elegant circle, fingertips touching, arms raised high. This morning, we also practice leaning inward and extending one leg outward--and--the most beautiful and awkward of all, grasping our the arch of our foot, extending it outward and to the right (or left), all the while grasping the shoulder of our friend as we are positioning ourselves, and placing our heel on the extended leg of the person next to us. I'll try to draw an illustration of this pose soon, but it forms truly a celtic knot of a circle as our legs interlock with one another's and we lift our arms upward. My gratitude today? That I can do this--in community. In this kind of community, this beautiful metaphor for community, we can pose so much more gracefully and strongly than if we were struggling with balance on our own. On our own, even if, say, my balance feels right and secure, in the corner of my eye, if I see the person next to me teetering, my own balance is affected, as if were are connected by an invisible cord. Actually, I believe that we are, but when we stand in the circle, our cords retract, because we do touch one another. We recognize the connectedness that really does exist when we're not in the circle. We,re brought into connectedness.
I'd like to choreograph a dance like this.
Gratitude.
It is time to go.
I haven't yet spoken about Oliver Sacks, from whom Tana will take a course at Columbia this spring--or depression--I'll save that.
But Niko and I have just has a conversation about our advent teaching series, the great prayers of the Old Testament--and the beauty of that poetry, especially Psalm 23. But as Walter Breuggemann says, our Christian prayers are anemic in comparison--we'll look at Moses, Hannah' David, and Jeremiah.
And that's for another time.