Choosh

"And the idea of just wandering off to a cafe with a notebook and writing and seeing where that takes me for awhile is just bliss" (J.K. Rowling)

I have been doing just this for nearly a decade and a half now－sitting in a cafe with a steaming mug of coffee and writing in a journal whatever is in my gut and seeing where it takes me. I've been sharing a more thoughtful version with whoever wants to read it for almost four years. But always it is a reaching down deep into myself, usually with pretty much no knowing what I will end up with.

I have a new favorite word: Choosh. And you won’t find it on Google－at least I couldn’t. It is a biblical Hebrew word meaning “sense” or “feeling.” It is onomatopoetic－which is my lifetime favorite word－capturing the sound of a rush of breath that emanates from the deep reaches of the spirit. It is a word that speaks not of rational deliberation and assessment, but of inner vision. It is what you sense, not what you know.

I’ve been thinking about that word all week. When have I experienced choosh? When have I known deep down into spirit what I should do or what I thought would happen that defied all reason and fact? Certainly when I bought my house. It was ridiculous to think I could financially manage that, and crunching the numbers bore out my doubt. And I had no evidence that I could take care of a house all by myself. Then there was the garden: it was a mess. But my choosh was that it would work out, and I was the only one standing in the way of letting it happen. I bought that house, and that garden, and in the five years they were mine my life was changed.

When I first saw Ed Jones at the University of Washington in 1973 in the dorm we both lived in, I had barely been introduced to him before choosh, I knew I would marry the skinny man from the midwest with the wildly curly hair. Three years later it was irresponsible to conceive a baby with no income other than a graduate student stipend, but choosh we did it anyway: Nicholas. People kept cautioning me not to be so certain our second baby was a girl, and it would have been okay if it weren’t, but my choosh told me that she was: Emma. Deep down sensing.

I heard about a position that might be created at Pullen Baptist Church. I had no earthly business thinking I could be a financial secretary, but deep down spirit informed me that I was to go after it; and I did, even before it was open. And Ben, who recommended I be hired, listened to his choosh too, and took a chance on me. I grew that job and grew in it for 11 years before another choosh told me it was time to leave stable employment in the midst of a recession, to pack up and sell my house in a sluggish market and move across the country.

Those have been the big evidences of choosh in my life; I’m sure there are hundreds of small ones. Or are there? How often do I close my eyes, shut out the noisy world, and ask what is in my gut? Or just know without even thinking about it? There are the two or three times I have rolled down my window at the intersection and handed a dollar to the downtrodden person holding a cardboard sign asking for God to bless me. Once I handed someone the lunch I had just bought at Subway. Why? Choosh. A rush of breath that whispered “do it.” 

Sometimes I hear my choosh and let doubt persuade me to ignore it. And then feel disappointed in myself later. That happened recently, and I still feel bad. I pray that young expectant couple at the gas station who rushed to the hospital in the middle of the night without any money, got gas in their car to get home. Christina Baldwin writes beautifully in her blog this week of story happening at a rest stop on I-5 near Portland, her experience of listening to her choosh that surely changed lives: hers and the desperate mother’s.

Sometimes our decisions are driven by circumstances. We follow the yellow brick road, doing what we have to do, what gets thrown at us. We may go along for a while, trying to make the outcome different, all the while knowing in our deep spirit choosh place Oz won’t be where we end up or where we want to be when we get there. We close our eyes, shut out the racket, and ask what is in our gut, and finally follow it home. 

Do we take time to listen for our choosh? Will listening to what our inner guidance is telling us help us make decisions? I don’t know. But I am going to start paying attention. I shouldn’t have to be knocked over the head with it. Lent begins this Wednesday. I am going to engage a practice of slowing down, quieting my head, shutting out the world’s wisdom, and listening for my spirit wisdom. I am going to listen for my choosh.

“Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray” (Rumi).

[I am suspending my practice of using only the week’s new photos in my blog to share some photos of the inner spirit of flowers in my Raleigh garden.]