More than Thoughtfulness
As a person who is getting older, I am experiencing my share of aches and pains. They are the worst in the morning, upon rising from what is usually plenty of sleep. I'm just stiff and slow; a hot shower helps, and walking around, and getting my coffee. I also have trouble if I sit for long periods or carry too-heavy loads when gardening.
The solutions are 1. live with it 2. take pills (I resist) 3. see the chiropractor (I'm cheap) 4. correct my posture when sitting and walking.
There is a fifth one--yoga. I have to resist that as much as the pills although both work. I do not deny the benefits of either but cannot bring myself, will not do so, to use yoga.
I have researched it and found it to be too highly entwined with Hinduism. There may be some Christians who can make that leap; I'm not one of them. If an authoritative Hindu yogi says Christians shouldn't practice it because they would be mixing their religions, I'll take his word for it. He obviously understands syncretism better than a lot of believers.
My version of Christianity is exclusivistic, and that applies not just to other people. The Christians of the first century were burned alive as torches for Nero's pleasure because they took the exclusivistic claims of the Old and New Testament deity seriously; I figure I can sacrifice a yoga class because of those claims.
But this brings me to another subject, that of meditation. Here is a word with syncretistic tendencies as well, but it shouldn't have them. It's a perfectly good and necessary Judeo-Christian word, used frequently in both Testaments and practiced infrequently today, at least not in the correct Biblical way.
I hope to study this concept more and make sense of it; I'm supposed to teach the Psalms in the Fall, and the word occurs there regularly. I know this: meditation is a heart matter, and the biblical meaning of heart has less to do with emotion and romance and more to do with holism of one's being--mind and will and feeling and resulting lifestyle. One thing is sure--we can't meditate and text and drive and check email and fuss at the kids and cook dinner. We can meditate and forget the multi-tasking.
The solutions are 1. live with it 2. take pills (I resist) 3. see the chiropractor (I'm cheap) 4. correct my posture when sitting and walking.
There is a fifth one--yoga. I have to resist that as much as the pills although both work. I do not deny the benefits of either but cannot bring myself, will not do so, to use yoga.
I have researched it and found it to be too highly entwined with Hinduism. There may be some Christians who can make that leap; I'm not one of them. If an authoritative Hindu yogi says Christians shouldn't practice it because they would be mixing their religions, I'll take his word for it. He obviously understands syncretism better than a lot of believers.
My version of Christianity is exclusivistic, and that applies not just to other people. The Christians of the first century were burned alive as torches for Nero's pleasure because they took the exclusivistic claims of the Old and New Testament deity seriously; I figure I can sacrifice a yoga class because of those claims.
But this brings me to another subject, that of meditation. Here is a word with syncretistic tendencies as well, but it shouldn't have them. It's a perfectly good and necessary Judeo-Christian word, used frequently in both Testaments and practiced infrequently today, at least not in the correct Biblical way.
I hope to study this concept more and make sense of it; I'm supposed to teach the Psalms in the Fall, and the word occurs there regularly. I know this: meditation is a heart matter, and the biblical meaning of heart has less to do with emotion and romance and more to do with holism of one's being--mind and will and feeling and resulting lifestyle. One thing is sure--we can't meditate and text and drive and check email and fuss at the kids and cook dinner. We can meditate and forget the multi-tasking.
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