Terrapin Station

Don't Touch Me

I was at the end of a long day; a three-day training in Washington, DC concluded at noon and I flew home via Detroit.

Standing at the baggage claim at DFW, I was fairly zoned out. (I don't usually check a bag, but I yielded to the gate agent's plea for volunteers for gate-checks due to the fullness of the flight.)

Suddenly a large hand was on each of my shoulders, and a voice from behind me, at least a head taller than me, said, "Excuse me, ma'am, that's my bag." He moved me over.

He moved me over.

I was so stunned, I didn't react. I didn't turn to look at him. I never saw his face.

I didn't elbow him (as I once would have) - my years of energy work have left me less defensive, and now I have to think whether that's a good thing.

Here's the deal: Don't touch me. Don't move me. You can tap me on the shoulder, you can speak to me. I am most happy to move over. But do not treat me as if I were an object in your way.

This happened almost a week ago and it is still creeping me out.

Don't. Touch. Me.

Feast of St. Benedict

 

St. Benedict and the Rainstorm
 
Early February evening.
Benedict and his twin sister Scholastica,
talk for hours about dealing with wayward
monks, childhood memories, regrets, and how they
sometimes steal away to the forest to dance.
 
The beeswax candle extinguished, she
went to fetch another, dinner plates
pushed aside with drips of grease left from
roast chicken, celebrating this yearly
time together, the extra jug of wine nearly emptied.
 
He gets up to leave but she protests.
Benedict’s own Rule, requires him
to be back at his monastery overnight.
Perhaps she knew she would die only three days later.
Or maybe the rose-hued glimmer of evening astonished her.
 
Or this was one of those moments she just wished
would linger on, her brother’s beard shining
silver in the growing moonlight, wanting to
remember the great brown kindness of his eyes,
feeling the rough warmth of his hands in hers.
 
Her tears rise up,
falling in great splashes,
her weeping calls forth a fierce rainstorm.
Cosmic forces come down on the side of love,
demanding that self-set rules be broken.
 
I imagine the two of them listening to
the relentless rain beating down around them,
Benedict yielding to the moment, suddenly
seeing the necessity of riverbanks, but also the
widening expanse into the sea.
 
Perhaps that night they each dreamt that the river
swelled so high it lifted them to the blue bowl of sky,
until the horizon hallowed them.
Until he could see far beyond the stone walls
he had so carefully built.
 
---Christine Valters Paintner

(image is hers also, many thanks!!)