Monday Meditation

This week, I thought I’d share an old post from HBT’s The Spiritual Practice of… series.  I originally published this post in October 2013.  Enjoy!

Spiritual Practice of Drinking Wine (or how wine tasting taught me mindfulness)

Since moving to the Santa Barbara area more than two years ago and living so close to wine country, my husband and I have enjoyed the luxury of trying a variety of higher quality wines at a relatively lower price point than other parts of the country.  And being surrounded by wineries and wine drinkers has made the wine culture more accessible.

Here are some things wine tasting can teach us.

1) Prepare. Since I am nothing close to a wine connoisseur, I always like to read the descriptions that usually accompany a wine tasting and ask questions of the server about what the winery is known for, the process of making the wine, and what experience they want me to have.  I pay attention to key words like “earthy” or “finish” and try to prepare my palate to experience fully the wine I am about to taste.

2) Breathe. Experienced wine tasters will tell you the first thing you do when you receive a glass of wine is swirl the wine around a little in the glass to aerate it and then stick your nose in and breathe deeply to experience the wine first with your sense of smell.

3) Taste. Wine tasting is not really about drinking wine at all.  It’s about tasting.  When you taste wine, you don’t just drink it.  For one thing, you usually get at the most about an 1/8 of a glass of any wine on the tasting list.  That’s not even enough for one gulp.  Tasting wine is about really, really tasting it, taking a small sip of wine in through your lips, rolling it around in your mouth so that it touches all parts of your tongue, and even sometimes slurping or gargling a little before finally swallowing.  The point is to engage your sense of taste fully with every sip.  Some dedicated wine tasters will even spit out the wine after tasting it so the alcoholic effects don’t hinder the next tasting.

4) Notice.  Here is where mindfulness really comes in for me.  At every point in the process of tasting a particular bottle of wine, my attention is fully claimed.  From the moment the wine enters my glass, I am observing the color, feeling the weight of the glass in my hand as I swirl, breathing deeply to smell as much as I can from what the description tells me to expect, and then finally taking a small sip onto my tongue to contemplate the flavor as it slowly makes its way to the back and down my throat.  I savor.  All my senses are engaged. With this sip of wine in my mouth, I am fully present in this moment in an embodied way.  Then, before I take another sip, I consider the finish and the aftertaste. I compare it to the other wines I’ve had and to my expectations from the description.

5) Repeat.  And then, slowly, I go through the process again.  Do I pick up any nuances I missed on the first sip?  Is my palate more discerning on this trip than last time? Can I appreciate the wine more fully than I did last time?

6) Share. Wine tastings, like many activities, are more fun with friends.  Since my husband and I often go together, I like to ask him about his experience of the wine we are tasting.  What did he notice? How did it compare to other wines we have tasted? I find that sharing in his experience and sharing mine with him creates a greater depth.  My wine tasting experience would be incomplete without this opportunity to share with and learn from each other.

7) Change. I have found that since I started wine tasting, I accidentally apply this method to other beverages I try.  New blend of lemonade on the menu? Let me swirl it around in my glass and breathe it in first.  It’s led to some odd looks from dinner companions, I’ll admit.  But that has only further impressed upon me the benefits of drinking wine as spiritual practice.  Slowing down and allowing our activities and experiences to fully engage us in the present moment—fully engaging our bodies, minds, and spirits—helps us cultivate a valuable and lifelong habit reminiscent of Brother Laurence’s practicing the presence of God.

So, fellow pilgrims, what activities in your day-to-day life might be used to usher you into the present moment–where God is waiting for you?

When I was in first grade, my aunt would to pick me up from school each day and drive me home.  Before I had even settled in my seat and closed the car door, I had already launched into a steady stream of stories about my day that continued all the way home.  She hardly got a word in!

A couple of years ago, my aunt reminded me of this season and told me how much she enjoyed those daily drives with me, hearing all about my day through my unfiltered seven-year-old experience of the world.  She told me how much she admired my carefree speech, unburdened by the self-consciousness she knew I would grow into as I got older.

And she was right.

I became self-conscious earlier than most kids do–partly due to my personality and partly due to my family situation.  I began to adopt more adult attitudes, shunning childhood and adolescence as “juvenile” and holding myself to a higher standard.

The Drive for Perfection

This conversation with my aunt came back to me in a recent prayer time, and I realized how many negative attitudes and feelings arise when I think about my childhood self.  I noticed how much pride I felt growing up for always being more responsible and more correct than my peers.  I noticed how hard I always pushed myself to behave perfectly, to have perfect grades, to be perfect.

And I noticed how much resentment I feel toward myself when I am faced with imperfections in myself, with these areas now being uncovered that still need healing, with the same lessons I thought I had mastered coming back around again.  I thought about how I can so easily sit compassionately with others as they walk difficult paths toward healing and wholeness and wondered why I seem to feel so undeserving of that same compassion.

I discovered Christine Valters Paintner’s Abbey of the Arts several years ago and was inspired by her writings to become a Monk in the World and join the Holy Order of Dancing Monks (you can, too!).  I have been able to begin to live into all the commitments of her Monk Manifesto except the second one:

I commit to radical acts of hospitality by welcoming the stranger both without and within. I recognize that when I make space inside my heart for the unclaimed parts of myself, I cultivate compassion and the ability to accept those places in others.

I am terrible at making space for the unclaimed parts of myself and showing myself compassion. It is so much easier to be compassionate toward others than to myself.  When confronted with the child in myself, I would rather force her to grow up than to accept and value her as she is and be willing to integrate her into myself.  But without her, I cannot move toward wholeness.  Without her, I cannot become my true self.

Faith Like a Child

My invitation in this season is to adopt a child-like posture toward myself as I walk this path toward healing.   I am being invited to begin to approach my healing journey with all the curiosity, lightheartedness, and playfulness of the unselfconscious seven-year-old who still exists within me–patiently waiting to be acknowledged and invited along on the journey.

That little childhood piece of myself is not the shameful burden I treat her as but a wise and willing companion.  I have only to reach out to her, feel her little hand in mine, and continue together on our way.

Come on, little one. Let’s take just this next step together.

Healing is a messy business.  It’s gross and slow and at times tenuous and prone to error.  It’s also miraculous, largely self-sufficient and autonomous, and a basic element of what it means to be alive.  Without the ability to heal, we would all die of paper cuts and colds and stubbed toes.

During the healing process, there is a time when covering the wound is necessary and a time when uncovering the would is also necessary.  Covering the wound protects it from negative influences that might cause infection and delay or thwart the healing process while uncovering the wound allows it to breathe and prevents festering.  This marriage of protection and vulnerability is necessary for healing.

Uncovering

I’m realizing that the season I’m in these days is one of uncovering, of exposing, of revealing the woundedness that has been covered over and protected for too long in my deep, inner hidden places.  That woundedness that has been silent (perhaps, silenced?) for so long is now making itself known in unhealthy ways because I have ignored it, leaking out of the broken places I have tried so hard to hide.

It is an unpleasant season, this time of uncovering.  Full of uncomfortable emotions and surprising reactions that I thought myself beyond, I find myself once again in the same place I’ve been before, circling right back to the starting point–but not quite.

Because I have been here before.

The Wall

It was my spiritual director who first introduced me to The Critical Journey and The Wall we must face on our Journey Inward.  I was nearing the end of my seminary degree and found myself in an unfathomable season of pain and loss.  And here I am again, years later, faced once more with the wounded places in myself.

Only, it’s not quite the same after all.  This time, I bring with me into this season the knowledge and experience I gained from my last visit to this particular spot on my journey.  I remember how–with the help of wise and patient people who so generously companioned me–I learned that I could not scale the wall, dig under it, or go around.  I could only slowly and painstakingly begin to dismantle the wall, brick by brick, until I could make a way through.

Welcoming and Leaning In

The invitation in such seasons is one of courage to step out into the light and keep walking, vulnerable and exposed, trusting that something new and beautiful is waiting to be revealed. The invitation is to welcome the uncovering, to lean in with anticipation and expectation of what is about to happen.

As we submit to the uncovering, we create space for the healing that has begun in us to continue to its completion.  Then, in that vulnerable moment, the true self begins to be revealed, to be birthed, to come into being.  But first we must be willing to walk the hard path that leads us there, back and back again–footsteps upon footsteps–back to the place we started. Only this time changed, this time new, this time carrying with us all that we learned and experienced before.

So, what is being uncovered in you, my fellow pilgrims? How might you welcome it and lean into the healing you are being invited toward?