Good Posture

This morning my spine aches right down the middle. I have extended and curled the train track and left a message with the conductor at the station about routine maintenance. I have swiveled my trunk and breathed deeply. I am sitting upright now at the kitchen table, a pillow behind me. I am in first grade again, feet to the floor, right elbow on the table, left hand resting on the top corner of my journal. I am discovering that muscle memory includes posture learned for handwriting.

In 1997, I stood in a royal blue, short-sleeved leotard and pink tights, little girl ballet slippers on my feet. My class lined up with our small, sticky palms on the barre practicing posture. Our instructor later tells my mother about my uneven hipbones. There is a slight curve in my spine, something that will largely have no effect on my life.

This morning, at 29, I wonder if things have suddenly gotten worse. I cannot see my own spine to check.

I have finished breakfast and am really pondering now: how important it is to have people watching over and into your life from angles you can’t see from yourself. Like a dance instructor from behind to tell you you’re crooked. There are some things you cannot see in yourself. Patterns of behavior or blindspots created out of pain others have caused. Discomfort makes us observant. Love makes us learners. I hurt here, tell me what I cannot see.

I have been doing my best, sweaty palms on the wheel. But lately, I feel such a lack of confident certainty over decisions in my life. I have been asking a lot of questions. I have been stretching out what aches.

The trouble is, I can curl over and have a friend run the ruler of her fingers over my vertebrae and suggest a doctor, but only I can manage the pain. Only I can decide how bad things are. So often, I think we want an appointment to fix things. This works for cars and teeth and appliances, but it does not work for everything. Sometimes we need to just make a commitment to small improvement. I know that my spine has not been gerrymandered. I know that the pandemic has caused me to stay at home and that now I sit crooked and crunched working from my couch. I know I need to practice good posture to realign my structure.

This is how it is with God. My heart has been so tired and tension-filled. What I want is an appointment, a date on the calendar where I know I will get fixed, or at least get an answer. Instead, I know I need to practice good posture to realign my structure.

Is it blasphemy or is it poetry, to think of the Holy Spirit as a dance instructor walking behind us, checking our spines? Can Christ be the cushion behind our backs or the hard floor beneath our vertebrae, taking the pressure out of our bodies? Can the God of the universe be something as small as relief, something that allows us to say, I’m feeling better than yesterday?

Today I will sit upright at the table, and I will stretch, and I will pray. I will remember yesterday, when a bluebird flew over my head and made my mortal heart swell. I will remember that for every vertebrae out of place, there is a unit of creation ready to come along and prop up the places in me that have crumbled.