The public service announcement in the local paper says a Tai Chi class meets at the multi-generational center in our little town on Tuesday and Friday mornings and all are welcome to attend – no charge. A handwritten sign taped to the front door of the center reminds us to sign up with Louise if we want to stay for lunch. Today, lunch is a regional favorite – green chile cheeseburgers.
The building bears some resemblance to an old New Mexico church; exterior stucco the color of sand and a silver metal roof peaked and flowing over a generous outdoor patio. The outside seating area is swept clean and dotted with a variety of chairs and tables, none of them matching.
Which is a lot like the group gathered this morning for the Tai Chi class.
About twenty of us are here – men and women, black, white and brown. Some are teachers, some are ex-military, some are unemployed, some are church-goers, some are not. A few are Tai Chi experts, a few more have the basic idea and, for the rest of us, it’s our first time.
The oldest is Sarah, who just turned 83. Our instructor, Zach, is 70. And today, a flock of women from the local transitional living program have joined us. They are young, from early to late twenties, recovering from lives wrung hard in addictions and prison time. Patty, a caregiver, arrives with her client, Misty, a woman in her thirties with autism who cannot express herself with words.
Zach warmly welcomes everyone and demonstrates Tai Chi forms named things like “Wave Hands Like Clouds” and “White Crane Spreads Wings.” Zach reminds us of the importance of slow, mindful, breathing and movement.
We begin, watching Zach and each other, the music soft and simple. We start off sort of all over the place, looking a bit like a group of blind people searching for a door. We’re also self-conscious, as if there is a “correct” way to feel about in the dark.
Zach offers no additional words of instruction – we are left to try these movements without judgement or commentary, guided only by the invitation of his slow, graceful example. After about ten minutes our movements begin to synchronize, and it seems we breathe a single breath.
Our arms and legs and bodies sway like a stand of seagrass in an easy offshore breeze.
Misty doesn’t understand the pattern and instead quietly meanders among us. She walks up to me, slowly reaches out her hands and holds my face between her palms. I respond in kind and hold her face in my palms, the rest of the class flowing about us like water.
Our eyes meet and I whisper, my voice breaking, “I see you.”
Misty smiles and we lower our hands. She moves off again.
We bend forward now, our arms extended in a slow-motion swan dive. We sweep our hands downward, palms turning upward at the bottom, gathering space and grace and light back up to our hearts. We slowly straighten, our hands moving upward from our hearts, past our faces, above ourselves, above everything broken and dark and scarred.
A profound longing seems to lift skyward from within us all. A great hope, a dream far beyond all our small possibilities – to find a place where we belong, balm for the wound that will not heal, light to guide our way.
Something to let us know we are not abandoned. Not forgotten. Not alone.
We are all the same in this, we are all the world in this – we yearn to trace the edge of an eternal shape we think we may have known in a dream, a deep soul-memory from before.
If we could just reach out and touch the hem of it…
Something empty would fill, something broken could heal.
Zach brings us to a close, a gentle floating down of the arms and hands, like a leaf or a feather falling, to rest by our sides. A reverent bowing of the head.
We are silent, still. Together. One. We are…a prayer.
After a long moment, the women from the transitional center break out in applause and then we all start clapping, and turn to one another with a slight bow and a heartfelt “Thank you”.
We lingered quietly for a bit, reluctant to leave the threshold of the door opened to and through and beyond us all.
Beyond the Surface of Things 