Leaving Church - Barbara Brown Taylor [72]
Cleto’s timing left no room for more than about two exquisitely self-conscious questions like this, leaving me no recourse but to speak from my struck heart—or as near to that spot as I could get—which means that I do not remember one word I said. The only word I remember is “Aho,” which is what the people said when I finished. Then I turned with them to the meal spread across four tablecloths, which the Sun Dancers served to everyone else before taking one bite for themselves. All ate and were filled, and when we were finished I took home twelve baskets full of broken pieces at least, including the butt ends of my own gladly devoured heart.
*Myths of the Cherokee and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees by James Mooney (Nashville: Charles and Randy Elder Publishers, 1982), 130.
CHAPTER
16
With the new year on the horizon, my three months of unemployment were nearing their end. I had cleaned most of my closets, thinned most of my file cabinets, and answered most of my mail. More important, the load on my heart had begun to ease. Day by day I felt my soul rising through the murky currents of the past year toward a brighter, warmer place. This part did not feel like my doing, although I knew that slowing down had helped me to recover.
Like many ambitious people, I had developed a dependence on adrenaline. I could get so much done when my anxiety was in the red zone that I learned to live right on the edge of panic, in that optimum zone between alarm and collapse. It was my version of running hurdles and I was good at it. As long as I kept moving quickly, there was a great deal I did not have to feel. Sadness and loss were slow movers, along with bewilderment and doubt. Every time I heard them breathing behind me, I put on a burst of speed. But when the tears started leaking out of me on Sunday mornings at Grace-Calvary, I could not find my stride anymore. My feelings caught up with me and escorted me off the track.
After a couple of months of hearing what they had to say, I lost my taste for speed. I could sit still for twenty minutes without fearing my head would explode. I could even want twenty more. A dozen holy Sabbaths had taught me that God could carry on without my help for one day at least. While this knowledge put a dent in my sense of self-importance, it was welcome knowledge. When I took a deep breath, I could feel the energy run all the way to my toes. This was a different rush from the one that adrenaline gave me. When the air came back out of me again, it did not emerge like air escaping through the pinched neck of a rubber balloon. It emerged as the sigh of a rested person, which I had not been for quite some time.
I had thought I would be ready to get back to work by December, but I was wrong. I so loved the rhythm of waking with the sun, working at my own speed, and taking time to visit the chickens every day that the thought of keeping a schedule again filled me with dread. After so many weeks removed from public view, I also shrank from the prospect of being looked at again. Perhaps only deep introverts or people recovering from long illnesses can grasp such reticence, but it really does take a lot of energy to withstand human inspection.
The last time I had avoided it for so long was during my one and only sabbatical, which I spent traveling from Asia Minor to Africa. I lived the last month at a small retreat center near Kakamega, Kenya, in what is left of the rain forest east of Lake Victoria. During the day I straightened out linen closets, patched