And God said YES!

This morning I was reading, in Eckhart Tolle's New Earth, about how entangled we can become in our own gifts; how we can mistakenly identify with our appearance, strength, or agility -- and then, of course, when we lose some of that we are gravely shaken. Who am I, if I am no longer athletic or even mobile? Who am I if my once beautiful skin is now covered with age spots?

But of course to deny the physical can be just as egoic as to get caught up in it: pride in self-denial is not so different from pride that expresses itself in purchasing all the latest clothes or weekly visits to a hairdresser.

Somewhere there is a middle ground where we learn to accept ourselves and laugh with God about our foibles. And accepting ourselves can take a lot of forms: we can accept that our bodies are imperfect and learn to live with that, but we can also accept that there is a piece of us that rejoices in decoration. Because the fact is that God doesn't just love our strong and good parts; she adores our weaknesses as well, because they always have so much to teach us.

So I loved it when I finished my meditation and came to my computer to find this wonderful poem by Kaylin Haught, sent to me by my Texas friend Cathy. (Cathy is a priest who wore red cowboy boots to her ordination!)

God Says Yes to Me

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don't paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I'm telling you is
Yes Yes Yes

Now that's a great poem: Dang -- I wish I'd written that!