Darkly Devotions

Lyric prose meditations that play with elements from evangelical Christianity, Buddhism, yoga, reiki, Tarot and “weird voodoo shit.”

~by Cindy Clem

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Opening exercise: Stand in a doorway. Grip the trim with your fingertips and sag. Feel the pull on your stomach, on the muscles between your ribs. Arch your back so that your body forms a bow between fingers and toes. Align your bow with the bow of God. Let fly the arrow to your heart’s desire.

Today’s passage:
Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart. Psalm 37:4, NKJV

Testimonial: A Catalog of Unfulfilled Desire
When I was 8, I wanted ballet lessons, a canopy bed, and slightly pointed ears . At 10, I wanted ballet lessons and a horse. I wanted to find an abandoned baby on my doorstep, and I wanted to kick the kickball farther than the mean girl, Kristin Y., who took ballet lessons and who scared me by showing me soft porn when I went to her house for a sleepover. At 12, I wanted ballet lessons and to be able to move objects with my eyes. At 15, I wanted overpriced Esprit jeans, sharper calf muscles, a horse, and a boyfriend. I wanted to not have to wait 2+ years for each new Robert Jordan book. At 20, I wanted arms like Linda Hamilton in The Terminator or Yancy Butler in Mann and Machine. I wanted to be as good a writer as Keith S., whose paper my favorite professor read out loud in class. I wanted the actor who played the TV version of The Highlander to drive by my (parents’) house, see me on the porch, and slam on the brakes. At 30, I wanted a house of my own, a boyfriend, and a life purpose. I wanted to do a free-standing handstand and sit comfortably in the lotus position. At 40? To be determined all too soon.

Discussion: From this catalog, we can conclude that a) I have not delighted enough in the Lord, or that b) these are not the true desires of my heart, that perhaps I have mistaken the biological organ for a Valentine’s-shaped symbol. Traditional interpretation of Psalm 37:4 supports choice (a). If you’re not getting what you want, it’s because you’re not delighting enough in the Lord, and if you’re not delighting enough in the Lord, you don’t know what you want or you don’t want the right things. If you delight in the Lord a lot, your chief desire will become delighting in the Lord some more, and then you’ll be eternally fulfilled.

But let’s consider choice (b). What does my physical heart desire? I think it desires to be a good heart. It desires a rhythmic beat and pump. It desires synchronized chambers. It desires absence of blockage and free flow of blood. What is the effect of delight on the heart? Often, a quickened pulse. And, according to a study done by the University of Maryland Medical Center, protection from heart attack.

But now the tricky part: delighting also in the Lord. If delighting in the Lord means beaming and talking about how “blessed” I am, I’d prefer to focus on the word “also” and hope that my delight in other things counts. For example, I delight at things kids say (they say the darnedest things), I delight at putting a grade on the last paper, I delight at shutting my roommate’s cats in the basement and delight when they pound and cry at the door.

The Bible states, somewhere, that all good things come from above, which, if we take “above” to mean God rather than the ceiling, means that every time we delight in something good, like shooting fake arrows from our bellies, we’re delighting in the Lord. Ergo, we might not have a heart attack.

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Cindy Clem received her MFA in poetry in 2005 and has been writing non-fiction ever since. Her poems and essays have appeared (magically!) in Mid-American Review, The Normal School, Prairie Schooner, Memoir (and), Superstition Review, The Interrobang, Spittoon, and Michigan Quarterly Review (forthcoming).