Revised version of Things that are working

When I edited the blog after I posted it, the edits didn't show up in the displayed version, so here's a new attempt.
I'm feeling like there's significant positive movement happening in my life at the moment and thought I'd blog about some of the reasons:

1. Tai chi/qi gong/meditation
2. Eating better
3. Personal devotional practice
4. Dreamwork
5. Ritualmaking
6. Spiritual direction

I was going to do a separate post about each so that people can respond to whichever they find interesting. But then I realised that by the nature of blogs they would come out back to front, so here it is in one huge post.
Tai chi/qi gong/meditation
I first started a kind of light Zen sitting through Andrew R's influence, in the monthly contemplative group that was meeting two or three years back. I found that even doing it once a month for a short period brought benefits. I've done other breath-control stuff, too, and feel I'm calmer and more grounded as a result. I was recently reading a book on self-hypnosis and most of the exercises in it for calmness were actually breathing and visualisation exercises of the type I already do.
I started tai chi classes a couple of years back now, looking for a low-impact way to improve my fitness that wouldn't require me to go far from home. (I was unfit and hence had little energy, and my joints give me trouble if I do most exercises.) I found a class at a nearby high school. Took me about a year to learn the form (and this is the 24-step form I'm talking about here) - I'm not usually such a slow learner, but this was body stuff and I at least believe I'm not good at that. It improved my energy and I also got interested in the theory.
I don't buy into much of the theory of traditional Chinese medicine (to which tai chi and qi gong are connected), but these slow, gentle movements do promote fitness and balance. And qi gong, which is even slower, doesn't involve moving your feet, and is more "consciousness exercises accompanied by movement" than "movement accompanied by consciousness exercises", has given me more body awareness and more of a sense of being grounded, centred and balanced in my physical body. Given that I'm drifting slowly towards quite an incarnational theology, that's fitting in well. Again, the qi gong is a community class, $25 and just down the road.
Eating Better
I'd known for a while that what I was eating wasn't working for me. Eventually the time came along when I was also motivated to do something about it. I've started going to the local fruit shop (where fruit and vegetables are better, and cheaper, than in the supermarket), and have also eliminated refined sugars entirely, and other kinds of sugars largely, from my diet. (I have a particularly bad reaction to sugar, my body floods itself with too much insulin if my blood sugar rises too high, so this has made quite a difference.) I did the Atkins thing briefly but then with more research realised that I actually need some carbs to "calm" me - I get too wired on mostly protein, and that's uncomfortable. But I also need to make sure that the carbs are the right ones so that I don't end up dozy.
Basically it was a trial and error thing and your mileage will definitely vary; I have an unusual metabolism. But it's made a big difference getting my food intake closer to what my body, apparently, wants.
Personal Devotional Practice
For years, I hadn't had a regular personal devotional practice; it was part of the grey zone I was in, I suppose. With more energy, though, I've tried a couple of things and they're going OK. I use what I call a "<a href='http://www.csidemedia.com/work.php?work_id=212'>non-Mary-hailing rosary</a>" - basically a repetitive set prayer which, like the meditation, the breathwork, the tai chi or the qi gong, quiets my mind down. I say it in the car on the way to work at the beginning of the week and finds it makes a good start.
I've also found that my relationship to orthodoxy has changed. Before I started using it I was just vaguely unsure about what I believed, and didn't feel very orthodox, although I didn't really believe anything specifically unorthodox either with any firmness. The rosary incorporates the Nicene Creed, and I found that saying it in a meditative context (i.e. treating it as mystical rather than doctrinal) changed my affective relationship with the orthodoxy that it represents. Not that I am now reconciled to the political evils perpetrated by the orthodox (visible) church through history, just that I feel more connected to the orthodox (invisible or semi-visible) church, and more grounded in something particular.
From that grounding I feel safe exploring in a way which is not necessarily orthodox in a traditional way - i.e. looking at things with fresh eyes. More of that will no doubt turn up in this blog over time.
I've also started "soaking" in the Gospel of John. I've read it in Latin (which I recently learned), English (the Jerusalem Bible, to get some Catholic bias as a change from Protestant bias), and am currently working through it in Greek (which I learned years ago but haven't used for a while). I'm looking at it as a three- to five-year project, without much in the way of definite goals - I just want to become deeply engaged with the text and see what happens. I expect I'll probably make some art as part of that process, and being who I am will also do some theological reflection in prose form.
I don't set myself a number of verses a day or any of the other things I did when I was young and fanatical. If I miss a day, I've missed a day. If I only read a short amount, I've read a short amount. If a large amount, a large amount. It's cool.
Dreamwork
Earlier this year or late last year I got interested in lucid dreaming - where you realise in your dream that it's a dream and you have some degree of control. So I've been taking more notice of my dreams. I haven't had a lot of lucidity because I haven't been putting in the hard work you need to do to get it happening regularly, but the dreams I've had have been interesting, to say the least. I've been touched on the throat by Jesus and had a jolt go through me so I woke up choking, and have been given the Elemental Sword of Air, which I was pretty happy about. I've flown a bit, too, which is always fun. And I've gained a few insights thanks to my spiritual director (more below).
Ritualmaking
I recently did the second of three courses in AUT's <a href='http://intouch.aut.ac.nz/intouch/CourseInfo/knowledge_base/kb_sub.php?articleid=364&sectionid=38'>Certificate in Celebrant Studies</a>, which I don't possess sufficient enthusiastic adjectives to describe. It's transformative, more like an initiation than an academic course. Which is as it should be. I could learn the academic content from a book. But from a fine teacher like Mary Hancock, who's been a celebrant for 20 years, and from others from diverse backgrounds who want to be celebrants and ritualmakers too, I learn - so much more.
I'm not sure exactly where I'm going with it, though I am enjoying writing liturgies and ceremonies like Brenda's induction ceremony and one of the liturgies for the new Sunday evening service. My thoughts are around assisting people to healing and transformation, for which ritual is astonishingly powerful. (I've got an article in gestation about just why that is.) Because the courses make you look at your own stuff and put you through your own transformation, I'm finding myself more confident, more grounded, and feeling almost like a grownup. Which at almost 38 is pretty good, in our society.
Fewer than 20% of the students on the course are men, and one of the things I want to think about more is why this is and whether it's a problem or not.
Spiritual Direction
Finally (in chronological order of recency), spiritual direction. That's not at all a good name for it - don't you find that when you're doing something different and innovative, one of the problems is that there's no short explanation for it, and even the terms that come kind of close are often the most misleading? I'm meeting with Andrew Rockell for about an hour and a half each week and talking about what's happening in my life. He's giving me strange sideways interpretations of my dreams, obscure passages from Paul Tillich, and a lot of encouragement and insight. As is his wont. It's good to have another set of eyes - sympatico but different - to run over the key events in my life and offer an alternative view, pointing out things I would never have seen.
He doesn't "direct" me in any sense except to suggest some directions for exploration from time to time.
Well, burble burble, I've said enough, more than enough, probably. Blog entries are supposed to be short. But I'm consititutionally incapable of doing things like other people, and besides, I had a backlog (backblog?) to catch up on.