Charter for Compassion

I saw this today via a Facebook link posted by my friend Bruce A., and I signed the charter.

Egypt

Compassionate Heart,

let your mercy flow to those

immediately exposed to peril.

Comfort the imprisoned,

relieve the sufferings of the wounded, 

and show mercy to the dying.

Deliver us from the wrath 

of threatened leaders.

Protect us from any harsh zealotry

residing within our justified anger.

Hear the resounding cry

of all peoples for freedom.

Amen.

The Value of Ritual in Sustaining Prayer

Several years ago, Fr. Justin Langille, who was then the coordinator of Contemplative Outreach of San Diego, shared this piece of wisdom by Ronald Rolheiser with local centering prayer group leaders. I'm re-sharing it today.

In a homily at a wedding, Dietrich Bonhoeffer once gave this advice to a young couple: “Today you are young and very much in love and you think that your love can sustain your marriage.  It can't.  Let your marriage sustain your love.” 

     Love and prayer work the same.  Neophytes make the mistake of thinking that they can be sustained simply through good feelings and good intention, without the help of a ritual container and a sustaining rhythm.  That's naive, however sincere.  Love and prayer can be sustained only through ritual, routine and rhythm. Why? 

     What eventually makes us stop praying, John of the Cross says, is simple boredom, tiredness, lack of energy.  It's hard, very hard, existentially impossible, to crank up the energy, day in and day out, to pray with real affectivity, real feeling and real heart.  We simply cannot sustain that kind of energy and enthusiasm.  We're human beings, limited in our energies, and chronically too tired, dissipated and torn in various directions to sustain prayer on the basis of feelings.  We need something else to help us.  What? 

     Ritual — a rhythm, a routine.  Monks have secrets worth knowing, and anyone who has ever been to a monastery knows that monks (who pray often and a lot) sustain themselves in prayer not through feeling, variety or creativity, but through ritual, rhythm and routine.  Monastic prayer is simple, often rote, has a clear durational expectancy, and is structured so as to allow each monk the freedom to invest himself or hold back, in terms of energy and heart, depending upon his disposition on a given day. That's wise anthropology. 

     Prayer is like eating. There needs to be a good rhythm between big banquets (high celebration, high aesthetics, lots of time, proper formality) and the everyday family supper (simple, no-frills, short, predictable).  A family that tries to eat every meal as if it were a banquet soon finds that most of its members are looking for an excuse to be absent.  With good reason.  Everyone needs to eat every day, but nobody has energy for a banquet every day. 

     The same holds true for prayer.  One wonders whether the huge drop off of people who used to attend church services daily isn't connected to this.  People attended daily services more when those services were short, routine, predictable and gave them the freedom to be as present or absent (in terms of emotional investment) as their energy and heart allowed on that given day. 

     Today, unfortunately, we are misled by a number of misconceptions about prayer and liturgy.  Too commonly, we accept the following set of axioms as wise:  Creativity and variety are always good.  Every prayer celebration should be one of high energy.  Longer is better than shorter.  Either you should pray with feeling or you shouldn't pray at all.  Ritual is meaningless unless we are emotionally invested in it. 

     Each of these axioms is over-romantic, ill thought-out, anthropologically naïve and not helpful in sustaining a life a prayer.  Prayer is a relationship, a long-term one, and lives by those rules.  Relating to anyone long-term has its ups and downs.  Nobody can be interesting all the time, sustain high energy all the time, or fully invest himself or herself all the time.  Never travel with anyone who expects you to be interesting, lively and emotionally-invested all the time.  Real life doesn't work that way.  Neither does prayer.  What sustains a relationship long-term is ritual, routine, a regular rhythm that incarnates the commitment. 

     Imagine you have an aged mother in a nursing home and you've committed yourself to visiting her twice a week.  How do you sustain yourself in this?  Not by feeling, energy or emotion, but by commitment, routine and ritual.  You go to visit her at a given time, not because you feel like it, but because it's time.  You go to visit her in spite of the fact that you sometimes don't feel like it, that you sometimes can't give her the best of your heart, and that often you are tired, distracted, restless, over-burdened and are occasionally sneaking a glance at your watch and wondering how soon you can make a graceful exit. 

     Moreover, your conversation with her will not always be deep or about meaningful things.  Occasionally there will be emotional satisfaction and the sense that something important was shared, but many times, perhaps most times, there will only be the sense that it was good that you were there and that an important, life-giving connection has been nurtured and sustained, despite what seemingly occurred at the surface.  You've been with your mother and that's more important than whatever feelings or conversation might have taken place on a given day. 

    Prayer works the same way.  That's why the saints and the great spiritual writers have always said that there is only one, non-negotiable rule for prayer: "Show up!  Show up regularly!" The ups and downs of our minds and hearts are of secondary importance.

Ronald Rolheiser, a Roman Catholic priest and member of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, is president of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, Texas. He is a community-builder, lecturer, and writer.

The Discipline That Liberates

"Prayer is not an effort to make contact with God, to bring God to our side. Prayer, as a discipline that strengthens and deepens discipleship, is the effort to remove everything that might prevent the Spirit of God . . . from speaking freely to us and in us. The discipline of prayer is the discipline by which we liberate the Spirit of God from entanglement in our impatient impulses. It is the way by which we allow God's Spirit to move freely."

--From Compassion: A Reflection on the Christian Life, by Henri J.M. Nouwen, Donald P. McNeill, and Douglass A. Morrison. New York: Doubleday, 1982, p 102.

Peace and Civility Pledge

The pastor of my church (you go, Fr. Mike!) encouraged the congregation to check out and sign this pledge made available through Sojourners, a Christian organization seeking to build a movement of spirituality and social change. Here is the text of the pledge, which is available at www.sojo.net:

The church can offer a message of hope and reconciliation to a nation that is hurting and deeply divided. We urge those who claim the name of Christ to "put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you" (Ephesians 4:31-32).

We pledge to God and to each other that we will lead by example in a country where civil discourse and peacemaking are rare. We will work to model a better way in how we treat each other in our many communities, across religious and political lines. We will strive to create safe and sacred spaces for common prayer and community discussion as we come together to seek God's will for our nation and our world.

1.) We believe Jesus' teaching that "Blessed are those who make peace" (Matthew 5:9). We acknowledge that most of us have been guilty of violence in our hearts and with our tongues. We hold ourselves to the higher standard to which Christ called us: to refrain from not only physical violence but violence of the heart and tongue. "Do not commit murder. Anyone who murders will be judged for it," and "Do not be angry with your brother or sister" (Mathew 5:22-23).

2.) We commit that our dialogue with each other will reflect the spirit of the Scriptures, which tell us, in relating to each other, to be "quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry" (James 1:19).

3.) We believe that each of us, and our fellow human beings, are created in the image of God. This belief should be reflected in the honor and respect we show to each other, particularly in how we speak. "With the tongue we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God....this ought not to be so" (James 3:9,10).

4.) We pledge that when we disagree, we will do so respectfully, without falsely impugning the other's motives, attacking the other's character, or questioning the other's faith. We will be mindful of our language, being neither arrogant nor boastful in our beliefs as we strive to "be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love" (Ephesians 4:2).

5.) We recognize that we cannot function together as citizens of the same community, whether local or national, unless we are mindful of how we treat each other. Each of us must therefore "put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body" (Ephesians 4:25).

6.) We commit to pray for our political leaders - those with whom we agree or disagree. "I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made -- for kings and all who are in high positions" (1 Timothy 2:1-2).

7.) We believe that it is more difficult to hate others, even adversaries and enemies, when we are praying for them. We commit to pray for each other, those with whom we agree and those with whom we may disagree, so that we may be faithful witnesses to our Lord, who prayed "that they may be one" (John 17:22).

--Sojourners, www.sojo.net 

Nekkid (Part Two)

(Nekkid Part One is here).

So on that bright, clear, late afternoon at Esalen, after our kindly young host Ryan proclaimed “Let’s get naked,” I left my swimsuit behind as we took the short walk down a hill-protected pathway to the therapeutic pools. It helped that my friend Liz, the other female guest in our party, had decided not to wear a suit either. She and I had joked earlier about gravity being our enemy. But, bitch, at least you’re leaner than lean, I’d thought. And at least you’ll blend in. I was certain to be the only mulatta thunder-thighed wonderwench in the place.

Not even towels were required – fresh towels were in copious supply at the entrance to the changing room area. I still insisted on bringing in my own personal extra-large beach towel. It was the sole towel (security blanket?) in the cosmos, I was certain, that could wrap around my body completely. Sure, I’ll walk while naked. But naked under my towel. Fully be-toweled, at least until I stepped in to the water . . .

The changing room and bathrooms were all dual-gender. So the first big challenge was to strip in mixed company. I did this as quickly as possible, silently cursing and laughing at myself for having worn those ugly-but-comfortable “bloomer-style” panties. Then we were required to take showers before entering the pools. Good idea. But that meant being without a towel in bright naked sunlight, at least for a few moments -- because the shower room was wide-open and exposed to the sky. I held my breath and dove into the spacious warmth.

At the shower-fount, the first person to look right at me, face to face, with soothing, loving eyes, was Liz. And of course she did not gawk or stare or laugh. She simply tilted her head and shrugged slightly, flashing a smile full of mirth. Well, here we are; we’re doing this! I smiled back. And giggled. Like the little parading naked girl within, gleeful, glowing . . .

In an instant I felt free and light. I was—we were—naked in public, and the world had not ended. No one was going to run screaming from the baths. No one was really looking at us. In fact, no one was noticeably checking anyone else out – and to do so in such a bright and open environment would have probably seemed rude. I could relax.

I could relax. At least for an instant, that is. As soon as I left the shower room, I automatically reached for my big security towel.

Then there was one disconcertingly funny interaction. After my shower, I had to retrace my steps to the pools’ entryway to find the toilet stalls (deciding it would be best to approach the ensuing event with an empty bladder). On my brief trek back through the changing room, a man, a naked stranger, walked up to me and asked, “Are you Natalie?” I answered simply “no.” And he continued asking this question of each and every woman in the changing area. It looked like there was no Natalie there. And I wondered, what was all that about? Had he been sent to get a message to someone named Natalie? Did he have a blind date he was supposed to meet at the Esalen pools? (5:00 p.m. Saturday –blind bathing date with Natalie …) Or, poor thing, was he simply nearsighted?

I am nearsighted, so I kept my glasses on and searched the pool area for familiar faces, since everyone in our party had already gotten in the water. Esalen’s outdoor therapeutic pools are perched on the edge of a rocky cliff, right over the Pacific Ocean, lending expansive views of sea, sky, and coastline. Each pool, formed from cut stone, is large enough to fit about 8 people comfortably. I found our pool when I recognized the funky hair pattern on my husband’s back. Everyone waved me to come on in. So, tah-dah, off went my super security towel. I stepped down into the bath and was submerged in the deliciously hot water in about two seconds.
I had put myself through a whole lot of rigmarole for some very brief moments of outright nakedness. Sitting in a pool made of dark stone actually provides a good amount of cover. Once submerged, no one can see much of anyone’s body, except for the parts that are above water: shoulders, neck, face. Thus, being naked under the water at Esalen is quite similar to being naked under clothing.

Well – except for one, or rather two, things. My breasts, twin elephant seals, kept buoyantly surfacing, causing my nipples to poke up and bounce above the water line. Apparently there were only two counter-actions I could take to prevent this caricature-like effect: submerge myself, head and all, under water—or use my upper arms to keep the bulk of my breasts tucked in and under the pool’s surface. Not having any scuba equipment on hand, I chose the latter. It was a bit like holding two beach balls down, but I managed to keep my nipples from constantly announcing themselves. Not that anyone was really noticing or that anyone was bothered by the appearance of nipples on such a generously beautiful day. This was simply my trained-and-ingrained polite good-girlishness rearing its . . . pointedly be-nippled head …

So we all leaned back and soaked under the wide clear sky. We had chosen an incredible part of the day: sunset and dusk and moon-rising time. Folks are warned not to stay in the water for too long -- a necessary disclaimer for people who have health problems that could be aggravated by hot-water soaking. Since we were able to control the temperature of the water and keep it in the comfortable and safe “bathtub-hot” range, we disregarded the warning and remained in the pool for hours, watching as the sky darkened and the constellations slowly emerged. And floating there naked in a womb full of stars, tucked in a cradle of wild earth, drunk on warmth and steam, we talked of everything and nothing in particular: evolution, philosophy, friends found and lost, dark chocolate, the stillness of the sunset, Arcturus and Orion, the possibility of seeing whales. As the hours passed, we were slowly lulled into silence by the rhythmic thundering of the sea. The pool was a dream in which we lingered, a forgotten song about the most elemental things: damp hair, night sky, stretches of sand, soft feet, happy thirst, fresh air to breathe . . .

The silence was broken at one point by meteors streaking across the sky. Would the graces of this night ever let up? A few people exclaimed and pointed up at the falling stars, and I remembered the magical phrase one must say at such moments: “Make a wish!” As if there could be anything to wish for there in that complete, sumptuous moment.

How could I have thought that there was ever anything to want or anything to fear in this wild, holy world?

Nekkid Part Three is here.

Prayer for the World

From hunger and unemployment, and from forced eviction:

    Merciful One, deliver us.

From unjust sentences and unjust wars:

    Merciful One, deliver us.

From neglect by parents, neglect by children, and neglect by callous institutions:

    Merciful One, deliver us.

From cancer and stroke, ulcers, madness and senility:

    Merciful One, deliver us.

From famine and epidemic, from pollution of the soil, the air and the waters:

    Merciful One, deliver us.

From segregation and prejudice, from harassment, discrimination and brutality:

    Merciful One, deliver us.

From the concentration of power in the hands of ignorant, threatened, or hasty leaders:

    Merciful One, deliver us.

From propaganda, fads, frivolity and untruthfulness:

    Merciful One, deliver us.

From arrogance, narrowness and meanness, from stupidity and pretense:

    Merciful One, deliver us.

From boredom, apathy, and fatigue, from lack of conviction, from fear, self-satisfaction and timidity:

    Merciful One, deliver us.

From the consequences of our own folly:

    Merciful One, deliver us.

From resignation and despair, from cynicism and manipulation:

    Merciful One, deliver us.

Through all unmerited suffering, our own and that of others:

    Merciful One, deliver us.

Through the unending cry of all peoples for justice and freedom:

    Merciful One, deliver us.

Through all concern and wonder, love and creativity:

    Merciful One, deliver us.

In our strength and in our weakness, in occasional success and eventual failure:

    Merciful One, deliver us.

Alone and in community, in the days of action and the time of our dying:

    Merciful One, deliver us.

Deliver us, Merciful One, by opening our eyes and unstopping our ears,

that we may hear your word and do your will.

    Merciful One, deliver us. Amen. 

 --Modified from "A Litany of Modern Ills," The Covenant of Peace, compiled by John P. Brown and Richard York. Wilton, CT: Morehouse-Barlow Co., 1971.

Nekkid (Part One)

This is slightly revised version of a blogpost I wrote back on Gaia in 2007, a reflection on body, baptism, and the mixed blessing of self-knowledge. It's quite long, so I've broken it up into three parts. (Even then, the parts are long-ish. I've been intending to keep my blog posts moderately short, but exceptions happen).

I attended Mass at the New Camoldoli hermitage near Big Sur in early January - on the Sunday celebrating the Baptism of the Lord. It was a ravishingly clear day on California's rugged central coast, sea so bright it hurt my shaded eyes, sky so blue it stung my fogged-in heart. Perched in tree-filled mountains overlooking the Pacific, the simplicity of the chapel invited me to breathe and declutter my mind. As the monks walked in, all robed in white and enveloped in frankincense, I glanced down at the cover of the Sunday program. It was decorated with a print of an old Greek painting of Jesus being baptized in the Jordan.

And Jesus was naked.

Not “naked” as he's often depicted on the cross–with some kind of cloth strategically covering the family jewels - but out-and-out-naked, stark naked, plainly, unassumingly, nakedly naked, his penis a pale fish bobbing a foot or so beneath the clear surface of the water.

And the homily quite intentionally focused on the nakedness of Jesus at his baptism. As the priest explained, this event probably did not involve physical nakedness - the cover of that Sunday's program notwithstanding - since it was most likely that Jews of 2000 years ago, with their culturally-prescribed rules concerning the human body, were clothed during their religious rituals. Jesus' nakedness was a nakedness of heart, a humility of spirit through which he could offer himself, body and soul and mind, in love and service to the All-in-all. His followers, too, are invited again and again to step into these baptismal waters – openly, transparently, baring all, seeking atonement, withholding nothing, clinging to no thing – and from that space of radical vulnerability, become an instrument of God.

Listening to a homily on nakedness with the naked Jesus peering up at me from the program cover, I couldn't help but chuckle. I had spent the previous evening naked in an outdoor hot mineral-springs pool at the nearby Esalen Institute, bathing with several naked friends whom I'd met through Integral Naked, one of Integral Institute's multiplex websites.

Unlike some of my well-traveled friends, I'm not sophisticated and nonchalant when it comes to public nudity. True: there was a very brief time, between the ages of three and six, when I took great joy in my unclothed body. I bathed unashamedly, with the door open, as had always been the case when my mother washed me. I gleefully ran around the house with nothing on, relishing the freedom of my own bare skin, tasting the temperatures and textures of the world without unnecessary protective layers. Since my mother was the one who set the standards for how one was to act inside the house, and since she often lolled partly nude herself (most often simply topless, especially during hot and humid weather) the unclothed body was perfectly acceptable to me. “Nekkid we came into this world,” my mother would say, paraphrasing Job of the Hebrew Scriptures, “and nekkid we will leave it.” While I knew that people had to wear clothes in public, I found that I preferred the unboundaried feeling that came with naked lounging-around-the-house. And I fully recognized that nudity, especially my own, was beautiful. My older sister sometimes took photos of me romping in the nude - typically at my own enthusiastic request.

And then, at some point, all of that simply ended. A clothing rule was set in place: first, always pants on, and eventually, always an undershirt on as well. By seven, I’d fully rescinded the joys of my childhood nudity. And once adolescence hit -- when one typically feels so visible, so exposed, so obvious, I was self-conscious to the extreme – always feeling “naked” no matter what clothes I wore, and (of course) unable to relish that feeling. The constant onslaught of never-achievable but culturally-lauded images of female beauty helped to guarantee that.

I doubt there will be a full return to the ingenuousness that allowed me to innocently revel in my own physical nakedness as a toddler. I've had no nude beach or nude sunbathing or nudist camp experience. I'm not even at ease with my own nakedness in women's gyms and locker rooms, among other naked women. And I cannot help but notice that many other women are similarly uncomfortable when they're changing clothes next to each other in the locker room. In these cases, it seems to me, we are not even worried about measuring up to some impossibly unachievable standard of beauty - it's more like a concern that our bodies are just plain not acceptable, not allowable. We seem to think we’re not even up to the standard of ordinary and normal. We often fear that our shape or our skin or our flab is shocking, disturbing, repulsive in some way. We may pretend nonchalance as we hurry in and out of our clothes, but we are secretly ashamed of our intolerable bodies, be they rebelliously large, conceding to gravity, not feminine enough, unbearably soft, wrinkled, shockingly pale, pendulous, scarred, crooked, uneven . . . 

Even those who have been Declared Acceptable and Beautiful are not free from anxiety about their appearance. I recall a brief clip of “Top Model” Tyra Banks (who was once hounded in the entertainment press for weighing - egads! 161 pounds! crucify her!) interviewing singer Janet Jackson. In a discussion of body image anxieties, JJ recounted a story of how a counselor-friend gave her a private exercise: she was to stand in front of a mirror naked, and allow herself to discover one part of her body that she thought was beautiful. Janet explained that when she did so, she actually broke down and cried. She looked but could find nothing lovely about her body. “I've never thought of myself as attractive,” she admitted. “I work at it, but I never feel beautiful.” Eventually, after repeating the exercise, she was able to acknowledge that she appreciated the sway of her back.

The woman who bared her pierced nipple to millions at the Superbowl cries when she sees herself naked? But nearly every woman I know feels similarly: if they're going to look in a mirror at themselves, they would prefer to be clothed, not naked. (When I did this exercise I conceded that my belly-button wasn't bad. It's just that whale of a stomach in which it’s embedded. . . )

So when my husband and I had the opportunity to spend a couple of days at Esalen with several friends, a visit that would likely include a dip or two in the clothing-optional hot-spring-fed pools, at first I quelled my feeling of dis-ease by noting that I still could make the choice to wear a bathing suit. Nobody (other than my husband, who has seen so much of me for so many years that he no longer knows what I look like) would have to be faced with the outrageous misfortune of seeing this unacceptable naked body. Hunh-unh. Options were available. This is a free country, after all. Thank God.

Then I began to wonder: would there be any other people wearing swimming suits? According to my husband, who had visited Esalen years before, probably no one else would be in a bathing suit. This might be a quandary. Because if everyone else was going to be nude, my clothed body would stand out more than my nude body would  … my prudishness, vanity, and culturally-encoded fears would be right out there for all to see. In effect, I could even be more exposed, more naked, if I wore a bathing suit.

Damned if I do and damned if I don't.

So if I was to be damned no matter what, why not just go ahead and be naked in the unsuited way?
Still, I had to take myself through a mental gauntlet: Could I be comfortably naked in a semi-public place and in front of my delightful friends? On the one hand, would my broad thighs, crooked butt-crack and gargantuan, H-cup breastiges really disturb the natives? What if they looked at me? What if they could not look at me? What if they could not help but look at me because I was such a FREAK of nature? A superfreak, in fact: the kind you don't take home to mother, unless of course you end up sitting next to your young friend's naked mom (as I eventually did), a lovely woman your age whom gravity has treated more kindly…

I tried to imagine the reactions of those who might glimpse me naked. It would be okay if so-and-so saw me naked, I suppose, but what about so-and-so? I mean, what if X really were to discover that I had acne scars - on my stomach??? Would X be everlastingly disgusted? Would I unwittingly make X feel awkward, or would X unwittingly make me feel awkward? Would X feel pity for me, or talk about me behind my back, or secretly gawk at my blubberous boobs? Or worse: silently laugh? And further, I asked myself - feeling increasingly indignant - what the fuck kind of human being would X be if they were so easily and readily put off by a plain old ordinary woman's body? I mean, really, what kind of a deranged, life-denying, mean-spirited motherfucker cannot handle the truth revealed in an unclothed female body? That's right, X, you and all the other willfully deluded assholes in this willfully deluded world: I'm a big strapping wonderwench with thunder thighs, and where there's thunder, there's lightning, so if you can't handle my naked body, you can just go straight to hell where you will be condemned to an eternity of eating lukewarm oatmeal with absolutely perfect, unerringly acceptable, always-clothed people who would never ever dream of exposing even the tips of their toenails to your heartless eyes. 

Jesus. Was I really that upset about how others might perceive me? I mean, beyond the envy-provoking possibilities of being compared to younger and leaner women – I didn't seem to be worried about anybody else's nudity. Being surrounded by other naked people, male or female, would be great, right? I was not afraid to be in the presence of naked friends, right? I was not afraid for anyone to see my husband naked, or for my husband to see others naked, right? I did not anticipate being appalled or outraged in any way by any imperfections or wrinkles or lumps or sagginesses of my friends. And in fact, wouldn't anybody else's “imperfections” only make me feel more relaxed about my own? That would seem to be the case. But I was still quite anxious.

So what was it that made me feel somehow more deserving of attention and “judgment” in this arena? Did I imagine myself to be special in some way that gave my nakedness more gravitas than the others? Did I presume that my buddies seriously cared that I had the body of an overweight middle-aged woman - as if my clothes had managed to hide that fact from them - and that my stretchmarks and flabby arms were somehow going to be this profoundly life-changing disappointment for them? Did I think that I was actually going to lose the affection and camaraderie of my friends once they caught a glimpse of my cellulite? And if by some ridiculous chance they were to reject me for such inconsequential things, wouldn't this naked soak provide a perfect opportunity to be rid of such friends anyway? I mean, come on: Did I really think that me, myself, and my physical nakedness mattered that much in the grand scheme of the cosmos?

The answers to most of those questions, of course, is no. The crux of all of this nudity nausea was something even more disquieting. For one thing, I was projecting my own internalized cultural hatred of my body on to my friends. But this deep fear and certitude that my nakedness would be result in judgments and rejection from my friends was suggestive of something lurking still deeper in the shadowlands. My fear of the judgment of others points right back at me, at my own unacknowledged tendency to judge and criticize and gawk and point at others. Even at their nakedness, their unavoidable flaws, their painful vulnerabilities, their tender unshielded being stripped of adornments and protections and illusions.

I'm not as tolerant and all-embracing as I'd like to think that I am. Although I often wear the clothes of charity and acceptance, in truth I am one of those willfully deluded assholes, a denial diva clinging to the illusion that the body should not change, age, speak of failure as well as joy, always live as it always dies … holding tight to the lie that sagginess and softness and lines and pockmarks do not have stories worth telling, and interiorly critical of and distraught by all that hints of death and impermanence.

But a couple of stories offered me strength as I pondered my upcoming date with public nakedness. Years ago my friend Karen, at age 60, agreed to be a part of an art project depicting nude women from every decade of adult life. Along with seven other women ranging from 20 to 80-plus years of age, she had several solitary photos of her taken standing in the nude. But Karen's presence in the project would add something extra - she was to be the only woman missing a breast. A decade before, she had lost her right breast to cancer, and she had also decided to remove the implant that had replaced it for a few years. On the night of the exhibition's opening, a friend and I joined her to celebrate. The completed prints were very large, with images almost twice the size of a human body, and so they each shone forth with great feminine presence - so much radiance that I noticed that people found it a little difficult, perhaps somewhat intimidating, to stand too close to any of the seven photos. Glowing, evoking reverence, they demanded their own space. And they were truly beautiful, scars, pootchy stomachs, and all.

Another story that sticks in my mind is from David Sedaris' memoir, Naked - the chapter in which he recounts the time he spent in a nudist camp. It took some getting used to, apparently:

I went to the pool this morning and watched as a man removed his colostomy bag and taped a sheet of plastic over the hole before entering the water. I was thinking of how uncomfortable he must feel and turned to see a very old man who walked with a crutch and had no penis. It hadn't been shriveled by the water; he just didn't have one. His testicles were large and hairless, but where the penis should have been, there was only a small cavity. He noticed my staring and said only, “Hot enough for you?”

Okay: now that's naked. I mean, even Jesus had a penis as he entered the waters.

(Nekkid Part Two is here.)

The Slowness of Molasses in the Wintertime

I am relieved when the winter holydaze are over. I know I am not the only one. Living in California makes one thin-skinned when it comes to seasons. My thoughts have fogged over and grayed, they hang low like the bellies of rainless clouds. In the morning I arise with sticky eyes – the central heating has dehumidified my lips; my tongue rests between rows of dry white pebbles.

Recent storms have turned our yard into a marsh. This winter existence is, somehow, simultaneously arid and soggy. I constantly emerge from a vague dream of icebergs in a sunless desert. My body resists movement. Hibernation is a real possibility. I am definitely prepared for it, after all that holiday gorging on various meats, creams, gravies, crusts, salts, and sweets. I am heavy and wide, a bear grumblingly turning inside her winter cave, a hoarder of sluggishness. 

Even the clocks tick more slowly, as if their innards have been dipped in mud. 

Is it possible to radiate an anti-glow? If so, I believe that is just what I’m doing.

But it is a new year, the end of the gorging season, and only 69 days left until daylight savings time. Lord, hear my prayer.