Touching the Earth: Weight as Sacrament


God said to Moses, Take off your shoes, for the place where you are standing is holy ground. ~Exodus 3:5

Go outside in your own backyard when the grass is still wet with dew. Take off your shoes. Stand with eyes closed in the cool grass and breath.

Don't just breathe through your nose: breathe through the soles of your feet. An ancient Chinese manual on the martial art of Tai Chi says, Today men breathe through their nostrils, but the ancient masters breathed through the soles of their feet.

Feel the weight of your body as a sacrament rather than a problem, a doorway to the Earth rather than something that needs to be reduced. Gravity is a sacred force: the sign of the Mother's hug.

Let your breath flow out of the ground into your legs and hips and belly. As you exhale, release the pent-up tension in your muscles. From your face right down to your ankles, give it up to gravity. All your tension discharges into the ground, yesterday's stale thoughts and worries released in the wet electrical grass. The touch of the earth brings you into this day. This is the only day there is.

Now, be a toddler just learning the dignity of standing and walking on this earth. Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh tells us that the real miracle is not to walk on water but to walk on the green earth. Lakota sage Black Elk says, Let every step you take upon the earth be as a prayer.

Sakyamuni Buddha taught that there are Four Human Dignities, and they are all dignities of the body: lying down, sitting, standing, and walking. We usually take a stand in our heads, on some abstract point of politics or religious belief. Why not just stand in your bare feet, on the living earth?

Walk slowly.  Feel the sensation as your left foot lightens and lifts into the air, the right foot pressing into cool grass, spreading like a hand to receive the earth, widening with body weight. Feel your weight roll from the heel toward the ball of the foot. Feel your toes gently grasp the earth, one last caress, as the right foot leaves the ground.

Walk this way for three minutes, that's all. It is not meant to be a rigorous discipline, but a momentary wonder.

Saint Augustine wrote, solvitor ambulando: It is solved by walking.

Walk to walk, without destination, an ever-arriving pilgrim. Walk just to experience the living dignity of a human body in its ordained place, connecting heaven and earth. Your body is the electrical link between soil and sky, the sacred cord with which the Creator is bound to creation.

Awake in a human body, wherever you stand is holy ground.

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