If I failed to address the enormous response that last week’s piece on yoga generated. Thank you to every single person who shared, commented, and contributed to the conversation. It has quickly been climbing the charts and is on track to become my most read piece of all time. In almost 10 years of blogging. So, that’s saying something.
I know that for many people it resonated in a positive way. As scared as I was to hit “publish,” the Holy Spirit kept nudging and encouraging and eventually gave me the shove I needed to fire away.
I also know that for some of my readers (and welcome to any new faces!) it was deeply challenging and even disturbing.
I want to reaffirm my position of compassion and education. Meaning, I put this information out there in a spirit of nonjudgment of persons (but not of ideas) with a desire to raise awareness.
I still have friends who practice yoga, and we are free to disagree on the particulars. But I couldn’t continue to remain silent and not share my story, not with what I’ve learned in the past several years.
I encourage any of you who are still struggling with the concept to read the Vatican document “Jesus Christ, Bearer of the Water of Life” in it’s entirety, and to take the matter to prayer. Find a priest you trust who is well versed in this stuff (and unfortunately, not all of them are), or a spiritual director who is familiar with New Age stuff.
And, it should be noted that just because your parish priest doesn’t have an opinion on the matter doesn’t necessarily mean there’s nothing to worry about. I joked with one reader that exorcists are like the oncologists of the clergy: they see the worst cases and they have the most firsthand experience with evil. And if the oncologists are warning about something being carcinogenic and my general practitioner brushes it off as something he doesn’t see much of, well, I’m probably gonna go with the guys who specialize in it, if I’m worried about my cancer risk.
I also wanted to congratulate the vast majority of commenters – even those with whom I was in disagreement – on being so classy and charitable! With a couple exceptions, the discussion was lively, respectful, and relatively calm.
I really do have the best readers on the whole internet.
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