"One of those days!"

So a couple of weeks ago I had...one of those days. One of those days where everything is just a little off. School was delayed for two hours; however, Calvin did not get the email until after having dragged a particularly tired six-year-old out of bed, gotten him ready and taken him to the bus stop. After they came back Calvin informed me of the situation as he left for work. Pierson was wrapped up in his coat with his backpack strapped on. He is now fully awake and very bored. Me: "Why don't you take off your back pack honey?" Pierson: "No I want to keep it." Me: "But the bus will not come for two hours!" Pierson: "I don't care". OK, I let it go. Pierson: "Can I see if Harper can play?" " Me: “I guess so." Pierson came right back. Harper's parents got the email and she is still sleeping. For two hours Pierson wandered and fidgeted in and out of the house, with his back pack firmly strapped on. It is now time to take him to the bus stop. This is just the time when the baby is napping and not happy to get into a stroller, when he was so comfortable on his mamma cushions. At the bus stop P immediately begins climbing the snow piles. I don't really mind, but his little friend’s mom does and says, "Hudson get down, you are going to get hurt." Sure enough right at that moment P loses his balance, knocks Hudson, and they both go tumbling down. Thankfully no one is hurt, but I explain to P in French to no longer get up there. He taunts me, inching up, one foot, all the antics, until the bus finally comes. It is 10 AM and I am exhausted and feeling stressed. I will go to the gym and take a nice Yoga class. 

It all starts off well enough. The teacher is very physically accomplished in her demonstrations. It is a very small class and she is giving lots of detailed instructions. I don't really mind, although it does seem to be a little micromanaging for my taste in Yoga. After all, Yoga is one's own practice, always called to listen to and honor your own body. Even though it feels a little bothersome, I understand she is only trying to help. Some comments feel a little pointed, almost irritated, but I figure it is just me. Then about three quarters of the way through the class something really awkward happens. She is doing an exercise and cueing to open from the hip. She is staring at me and talking directly to me. I look down and I feel that indeed I am opening from the hip. She repeats the same cue, repositioning her leg, and is staring right at me and talking directly to me. No doubts now, even others are looking at me. I look down again – I am opening from the hip. “This is so strange”, I think to myself. A little bit annoyed now, in an exaggerated way I reposition my leg (she did let out a sigh, ugh), I and look at her like, “OK?” She then (still looking right at me) says in a very catty way: "Do you just not want to do the exercise?" I am sincerely baffled and aghast. I feel personally attacked; it is so odd. Then she says the foot has to stay down. Oh, OK. Now I get it: she wants my foot down. That is the part I was not doing (nothing to do with my hip, which was the cue she gave three times in a row, followed by the menacing statement). Nothing was said, and the class went on. I was feeling really strange and vulnerable. I tried to finish the class with no eye contact, but I was seriously having a hard time letting go of this scenario and feeling verbally attacked.

At the end of class, I asked if I could speak to her. Two women beside me immediately jumped into the conversation to my defense: "Oh yes, I think you were actually opening from the hip. You are just so flexible." They obviously were hearing the open-your-hip cue as well. I wanted to talk to this teacher not so much to prove I am right (I was opening from the hip) as to let her know she wasn’t cueing the visual she actually wanted to see (the foot flat). Mainly, I wanted to clear the air, explain the miscommunication, and say: “Hey, being pointed out and talked to that way did not feel so great.” The two women who jumped to my defense were sweet, and confirmed what I was already feeling (this was not merely in my imagination), but I was less concerned about that than really having a genuine exchange with this teacher. However, when I did try to talk with her, it was near impossible. She was so defensive and quixotic that I could barely get a sentence out. When I first asked if we could talk, she said ‘sure’. Then as soon as I began to recount my version, she interrupted and cut me off. I literally put my hand up and said: “Can I finish?” Each subsequent attempt to explain the situation was cut off and interrupted also. I started to say: “If I am not doing something, it is not because I do not want to.” She continues: "I have been teaching twenty-five years! You have a beautiful practice. I really meant: ‘Are you not able, do you not want to, maybe because of an injury?’ Oh, sorry if you took it that way....”, etc. etc. She was defending her ego, trying to stroke mine, justifying in my opinion (a bit disingenuously) her choice of words, and finally apologizing, not for anything she did or said, but rather how I (and apparently several other people in the class) took what she said. In the end, she was incapable of just being and listening. She was incapable of acknowledging any responsibility on her part. I let it go. I said before I left: "I just wanted to clear the air".

I felt a little more light-hearted in the moment, but about an hour later it really began to gnaw at me. Especially when I thought: “Wait a minute, even her apology was not really an apology but rather a, ‘Sorry that you misunderstood.’” I cannot know her heart, but it sure did not sound or feel that way in my gut, and as a therapist once told me: “The body does not lie.” The day went on with several other strange mishaps, culminating in my trip to church that night. We were asked to park not in the lot, but on the street behind the lot to allow space for parishioners attending the event (a guest speaker, an author was giving a presentation). “No problem”, I thought, “I know exactly where that is.” However, there was also another event downtown that night and traffic everywhere. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that street was one-way. I ended up sitting in traffic and fighting with other one-way streets until finally, 30 minutes later, I gave up. I got back to the church lot where there were ample parking spots. I took one and arrived 30 minutes late to rehearsal. So that was the end of my day.

OK, so in the midst of a world where there is war, people are sick, some are starving, this is all quite trivial. But this was my life this day. I could not help coming back to what it was in this situation with the Yoga teacher that was bugging me. I realized for my part that I needed to be merciful. Yeah, it did not feel great, but I can imagine there is some deep suffering there to feel threatened by something so insignificant and to react that way. Viewing the way our conversation went – me, a stranger in a Yoga class – I can only imagine how difficult her more intimate relations must be.

There was something else though that felt unresolved.... and this brings me to justice.  What is justice and why do we desire it? If I am honest, what I really desired from that after-class conversation was twofold. The first was to be understood. “I was actually in fact doing what you were asking me to do, so when you verbally ‘attacked’ me it felt unfair”. I wanted her to understand that and then acknowledge her role in it, neither of which actually happened. But looking at it this way, I wanted the injustice of being treated unfairly to be rectified, and that was what would not let go and was nagging in my mind.

We all have a desire for justice, whether personal or political. When we see injustice in the world we cry out for the poor, the abused, marginalized etc. But why then do so many people abhor the idea of a just God? Why do we dislike the notion that a God of love is inevitably a God of justice? I think perhaps for most people the idea that God is just and gives out deserved repercussions to one’s actions seems harsh. I disagree, and here is why. A just God actually creates the space for human beings to be what He calls us to be: peaceful, merciful, and forgiving. We do not have to retaliate because that is not our job. Ultimately that is His job, and when one truly accepts this, then one can become more peaceful, merciful and forgiving. Not saying it is effortless, but the space for possibility seems much larger. If someone comes and murders my family, my whole being will cry "Revenge! Retaliation!" Only by trusting in a just God could I eventually step back, act in Peace, and know fully that this terrible wrong will be made right and perfectly so. This may not stop evil from being enacted in the world, but theoretically for those who believe it, it can stop the destructive circular effects of revenge and retaliation. Without a just God, it seems I would be left to my own devices, maybe enacting justice of my own accord (I might add that when this is the case people generally want more than perfect justice: there is usually the desire for a one-upping kind of justice). The other option: do nothing and remain perpetually dissatisfied.

In his book The Reason for God, Tim Keller talks about an argument for God which involves the idea that most natural desires have a true and real satisfaction that can be met. We thirst and hunger: food and drink are available. We have a natural desire for justice, and yet we know that it is wrong to do harm to another. Does that mean there is no fulfillment for our desire for justice? I think not, and if I can trust and forgive, in small and in large, what a beautiful space is created – a space of freedom, basking in the light and warmth of truth. Nothing to prove, nothing to do, just be and know that all is truly well. My own small feelings of injustice can be absorbed into a plan that perhaps I cannot always understand, but I can still know that what is good and right ultimately prevails.