Missing teaching John Calvi Sept 2020
I am missing in person teaching. I’ve spent nearly four decades on the road teaching in most of the US. I miss the open road. Now I am home all the time with only short trips into town for groceries. A particular workshop scene plays in me, a refrain of many times in many places.
I’ll begin teaching a workshop on energy work or massage or healing from trauma, avoiding burnout. I’ll begin teaching and looking over the group. Someone, usually someone sitting on the floor and not comfortably, will be looking at the floor and back at me for a bit. And then I catch their eye and say softly – you come over here and sit my me, it’s very safe; over here by me. And then there’s a shy smile or maybe a blank face who comes sits by me. Once the body settles there is some deep relaxation that begins. If you are scared, it is safer to come sit by me.
There is an instant where the offer of safety is made, that one comes right in and leans into that feeling of safety, and one can feel the gift was received deeply. That is a grand moment of compassion, trust, grace, and a rightness that washes the interior of those who can see.
It’s a moment of trust, integrity, and the reading of need that I miss. It’s a luxury for me to experience and it always felt like some shining Light that was simple, basic, and, in a way, lifesaving.
I recall my own path as a young person- out in the world too soon, unready, crippled by experiences and someone offered some kindness, some safety, and the burden of life lightened for a bit. That was the lifesaving I had, here and there, enough to get through. Doing that now, my life’s work, has been a great joy, a grand ride.
Years ago I wrote a song with the line “We’re all of us refugees.” I suppose it is loneliness that is the common experience that makes refugees of us all at some point in time. A simple kindness, a nodding smile when passing, a quiet hello, a bit of welcome that touches the traveler, a smidgen of hospitality to your corner of the world for one coming off the road – all this can save a life, can brighten a dull sense of life to delight.
Yes, I am missing looking over a crowd and finding the one who needs a bit more right now and saying, you come sit by me, it’s safer here, I’ll make sure of it.
