Many years ago I learned that, to prevent my back from seizing up on me, I needed to do a simple stretching exercise before getting out of bed in the morning. Stretching is an antidote to confinement, an answer to tension, a solution for paralysis that is not permanent.
A lot of Christians don’t like to stretch.
Jesus may not have taught yoga positions, but he was still a kind of yoga instructor, because he taught spiritual stretching. His spirituality stretched the religion of those around him to move out of ossification—which means to make rigid, callous, or unprogressive—to move beyond laws written in stone and temples made of stone.
Those raised on negative self-images know that “loving your self” is a stretch. Those taught to fear or hate a stranger realize that Jesus’ urging to greet even those we don’t know is a stretch.
By stretching, a spiritual community becomes expansive and inclusive and nimble. A breath is a stretch. It helps life-giving, oxygenating, vitality-inducing blood that we need to be nurtured and grow.
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