The Ritual of the Body

Ritual unites soul with body. Through our attention to what is before us in ritual, we bring ourselves to the present moment, which we inhabit because we have a body to be physically present in. Our body is vessel, container, holding space, a tabernacle to reverence through which we experience the world. We are body and soul, both, in equal measures, in goodness.

So here, we extol the body and all the ways it allows us to move about the world. We pay homage to the cycle of our bodies and the incredible bearing of life they can uniquely do through hearing from a doula who supports women in labor. We talk with restaurateurs who honor the body through feeding and serving people. And we go to recess with children to learn again how to forget ourselves fully through the art of moving our bodies as we play.

May these people and their stories remind us that as we are, we are holy. And may we move through the world eating, playing, letting life in all its forms pass through us, living from this knowledge that by our very existence, we speak of the beautiful, the wonder-full, the very good.

Witnessing to labor

Marian Johnston, doula

When Marian Johnston gave birth to her two sons, the hospital where she delivered them in Texas offered free doula services. With the support of a doula, Marian delivered quickly without the use of pain medication; the birth of her second son was medically induced. She describes her sons’ births as “magical” and “wonderful.”

But as a hairdresser, these weren’t the adjectives she heard many of her clients using to describe their own childbirth experiences. She says many women who told her their own stories were slightly traumatized from giving birth and had often had unpleasant childbirth experiences.

When Marian and her husband, Nick Johnston, moved to Cape Girardeau with their sons, she decided to become a stay-at-home mother. It was during this time she began thinking about what else she might like to do.

She kept coming back to the desire to create pleasant childbirth experiences for other women like she’d experienced, and she decided to become a doula. In 2018, she got trained and certified through a three-day program with Doulas of North America (DONA) in St. Louis.

“It’s kind of tribal, sometimes. It is,” Marian says of being a doula. “It is so wonderful to be in a room with the laboring mom and her husband and her mother and her sister, because then she truly has her tribe around her, and everyone is like, ‘Go, you can do it, there’s your baby, I can see it, don’t give up.’ And she really has a team of people behind her, helping her through it. It’s incredible. It really is.”

As a doula, Marian gives support emotionally and physically before, during and after a woman gives birth. She does this through meeting with the woman and her partner beforehand to help them make educated decisions and create a birth plan, which is the mother’s idea of what a perfect day would look like while she is giving birth.

When the woman goes into labor, Marian stays in the room with her and her partner for the duration of the birth, supporting them by creating a calm atmosphere in which they can get into meditation if they so choose, through the use of lighting, music, aroma therapy, massage therapy and any other items addressed in the birth plan. She also helps the woman stay cool and hydrated and get in comfortable positions throughout the birthing process. She encourages the woman and her partner throughout the labor and mediates between the couple and professional medical staff to ensure the birth plan is carried out.

A doula doesn’t give medical advice, administer medication or deliver babies. They can work at hospital or home births. Research has shown women who have doulas present during their labor are less likely to request medication for pain and are therefore in labor for a shorter amount of time. They are also less likely to need a Caesarean section.

Marian says approximately half of her clients seek unmedicated births, and half of her clients deliver with the usage of pain medication. Either way, Marian says the process is a beautiful one, and it is her role to support women in whatever decisions they make for the birth of their child.

“Giving birth is a ritual within itself,” Marian says. “You’re really going to see a lot more intention put into birth when there’s less pain medication, letting your body go into labor on its own. Sometimes, that can’t be done, but letting your body go into labor on its own and really focusing [can help] mentally, because you can [sometimes] block yourself from progressing in birth. You can get scared, and you can get stuck. You can get uncomfortable, and you can get stuck, and your body won’t let go to open up and deliver this child. I’ve seen that happen a lot towards the end — it’s hard not to be scared. That’s why it’s important to be there with people and just keep reminding them they’re doing a good job.”

During delivery, she encourages women to break the stereotypical roles they’ve often been socialized into.

“A lot of women, especially heavy thinkers, have a tendency to get kind of embarrassed about the things that are happening [while they’re in labor], whether it’s the sounds they’re making or whether or not they’re positioned to where their bottom is sticking up in the air and things like that, but just assuring them that those loud sounds, that’s normal, and it’s natural, and it’s good. Like, you want to vibrate in your throat, and you want your body to let go of all your inhibitions, just really let it out,” Marian says. “It’s really the best thing you can do.”

After the baby is born, Marian is available to help the mother with breastfeeding if she chooses, and she also checks in on the family a couple of days later to answer their questions and make sure they are adjusting well to their new phase of life.

It’s an adjustment Marian says she remembers as very challenging. She says while she was prepared to give birth and felt “amazing” after it, she was “blindsided” by how hard the first few months of having her newborn would be, and she often felt like everything she did was an “epic fail.”

“It seems like you just have these really long days, but it’s so short. It really doesn’t last very long in the grand scheme of things,” Marian says. “You know, you rest when you can rest — it’s not important to take care of all the other things that you are going to want to take care of. Like, you’re going to want to get up and do your dishes, or you’re going to want to get your house cleaned up because your mother-in-law is coming over, and those kinds of things just aren’t important. What’s important, especially for new moms who are nursing, is to hold your baby. Put your baby skin to skin, and put their little bare chest on your bare chest — that is going to really strengthen that relationship and really just help with bonding. And so just sit still and just breathe it in. It’s okay if you haven’t had a shower. It’s okay if your house isn’t clean. ‘Cause eventually, you’re going to get up and do it, but you don’t have to right now.”

For Marian, it all comes back to creating an environment where women feel supported and comfortable to let their bodies do what they were made to do.

“When women are in labor, they’re very vulnerable, but they’re also very powerful. It’s incredible to witness,” Marian says. “I’m just in awe of women. I’m just in awe. They’re so incredible. I’ve never left a birth without just beaming with pride for the woman that I just saw do that.”

Feeding people

Gracie Aguirre, Laly Martinez and Gabby Rodriguez, restaurateurs

It started with three sisters searching for authentic Mexican food in Cape Girardeau, the kind they were used to cooking at home. They wanted to serve people — and eat for theirselves — homey, “normal” food that would comfort them. Lola was a certified public accountant and knew numbers. Julia knew how to cook. Gracie was good at public relations. So, they began making tamales.

They sold the tamales from their home and then bought a concession trailer and started selling their tamales at fairs and flea markets. In 2007, Gracie opened a brick and mortar Muy Bueno restaurant location in the plaza off of Independence Street in Cape Girardeau. Four years later, as she was driving to buy corn tortillas, she noticed the building that formerly housed Show Me’s was for rent. She rented it, and, with the help of her family members, cleaned it up and moved her restaurant there.

Now, Gracie runs the restaurant with her two oldest daughters, Gabby Rodriguez and Laly Martinez; her youngest daughter, Lillie Aguirre, works there as a server.

“What I like is we see customers — it’s kind of like a family now,” Gracie says. “Like, they know us, we know them. So it’s like a big family, and that’s what I like.”

Gracie grew up in Durango, Mexico, and moved to Orange County, Cali., when she was 18. She worked there for two days in the fields — “It was not for me at all,” she says — and then for a couple of months in a tortilla factory before moving to Chicago to be with her sister. There, she worked with several companies for years before moving back to Orange County to work as a financial coordinator at a children’s hospital. From there, she moved to Anna, Ill., and then to Cape Girardeau. In 2008, Laly moved to Cape from California, as well, and Gabby was right behind her, moving to Cape in 2010.

“My mother moved to the Midwest, and my mother is a magnet,” Laly says. “My mom was the catalyst for all of us moving here. You just kind of want to be around Mom; you have her, and she’s the one that’s really behind the restaurant at all. She’s the one that really started everything, and so we just kind of came to help her.”

At Muy Bueno, Gracie is in charge of the kitchen, cooking, ordering and buying groceries and making sure the restaurant is running smoothly. Laly handles paperwork and social media. Gabby heads up the front of the restaurant, serving customers as well as leading the serving staff.

Although all three women say it was an adjustment learning to work with their family members and that they annoy each other at times, they have learned how to communicate with one another and have realized how much they love being around each other, living in the same town and working at the same place. They work to ensure each of their customers who patronize the restaurant feel nourished with that love expressed through food and service, too.

Serving at Muy Bueno for the past 11 years is the first time Gabby has worked as a server. As the manager, her joy is apparent through her actions and words: She loves what she does.

“For me, I’m happy. This is like the best job I’ve had, being a server. I don’t see it as a lower job. I just see it like another job. Because you’re serving people. And sometimes, people can be rude, and sometimes, people can be cool — it just depends on the server, how you’re going to end that relationship with your customer,” Gabby says. “A server is giving an experience, because you learn everything new every day. Nothing is the same every day. It’s a different pattern, and it’s different people who come.”

She says when she can see one of her customers is having a hard day, even though she doesn’t necessarily know their problem, she prays for them and says something to them to try to help them feel better. She sees each interaction with a customer as a challenge to rise to — especially when they tell her they came because they heard Muy Bueno is the best. She wants each person who eats at the restaurant to feel like they have a place there.

It is this sense of belonging that cultivates the ritual of family, the ritual of food, the ritual of eating out at Muy Bueno.

“We know a lot of our customers by name, we know their stories, and it’s something nice to be able to feed them, too, and have them come back for that nourishment,” Laly says. “Sharing a meal is so important. We love this spot because people come here with their children, and people come here with family members and grandparents — this is like their spot to stay. Just having that ability to unite around food is so important. People forget the conversation that is part of sharing a meal. … Here, it’s that one spot that you’re going to be nourished with good food and good ambience that makes you happy — you can leave comforted after you go.”

Playing

Second and third grade students at Trinity Lutheran School, recess experts

When I sit in the Burrito-Ville drive-through line at lunch — which happens a lot — I look straight ahead and see recess. It happens at Trinity Lutheran School, students running all over the playground, three or four of them at the fence waving to cars, others falling down and helping each other up, climbing on the jungle gym, playing whiffle ball, playing basketball, running, running, running. And screaming. They are so loud, and it is beautiful, this cacophony of delight. It is chaotic. It is wild. It is good and right.

When I honk one day at the small group of students standing by the chain-link fence waving and they cheer, I decide I have to learn from these kids.

What I want to learn about is wonder and awe and exhaustion, the all-out endeavor of giving all of one’s self in pursuit of an activity with no motivation other than the sake of doing the activity. But these are preconceived ideas, my own way of thinking about the world I am hoping to find affirmed through these young people. As Annie Dillard writes, “The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright.” Wonder and awe and exhaustion are my priorities, hopes, assumptions; what I learn instead as I play and talk with the second and third grade students at the school is about treating people with kindness and goodness and inclusion, despite what we may want, and risking for what is worthy. These are the things the students talk about.

“You have to make sure, even if you don’t like that person, you’ve still got to play with them,” Aria Hammonds tells me when I ask what wisdom she wants to share about recess.

“Like, if someone asked you, ‘Can I play with you?,’ don’t say no, even if you don’t want them to play with you — still say yes,” Addison Bartlett adds.

“It’s recess. Everyone gets to play with each other,” Joda Grace Bess says.

They say some of their favorite activities at recess include dancing, playing kickball with their class and swinging on the monkey bars. Even though some of the students say their least favorite part of recess is when they fall and get hurt, they don’t let that stop them from playing all-out. They tell me that when they do fall, they are taken care of: their teacher gets them a Band-Aid, or they go to the office for help.

Addison says even though getting hurt is a possibility, the risk of participating is worth it.

“Don’t just sit out to be safe; like, you can still play games and stuff, just don’t play something that’s going to put anyone in danger or hurt someone, hurt you or hurt someone’s feelings,” she says. “I think my least favorite part about recess is probably the fact that I get so tired after running around. I’m just worn out, but I don’t want to sit out because then I’m going to miss out on games and stuff, so I choose to just keep playing.”

Addison says she always feels excited for recess and looks forward to it because she doesn’t get to talk with her friends throughout the day. Joda Grace says she feels happy at recess “because she gets to run around.” Aria says after recess, she feels exhausted and wants to lay on the floor and go to sleep.

“Even if it’s been 40 minutes, it feels like it’s only been 10 because I’m just running around, and so I don’t even think to look at the time or anything,” Addison says.

This is the experience of unselfconscious timelessness we all want to get back to. That way of being in the world when something is so a part of us we don’t realize it. That feeling of being so engaged that when some external source tells us time is up, it comes as a surprise that time is even a concept at all, much less that we ourselves might be subject to it. Play. And play. And play.

While we’re on the playground, one child reminds me children can be cruel, parroting some version of bias, I imagine, they have picked up from the adult world, and I remember we each carry our burdens with us wherever we go. Children on the playground, like adults in the world outside of that safe, fenced-in space, are no different.

But, like the world outside those fences, the playground is also a place where deep goodness can be found in the hearts and actions of the people playing there, and every one of the students at some point demonstrates kindness and love to each other and to me. One of the teachers tells me she teaches her students to treat others the way they want to be treated, and it’s beautiful — when I speak with a few of the students after recess, one of them says she tries to do just that while she’s on the playground.

Just before it’s time to go inside, I am invited by some of the children to go down the slide. Actually, I get double dared. I feel a little silly, self-conscious, and need their help of encouragement to get on the jungle gym and slide down. I need to make sure they really want me to do this, that I will be cheered on and not come down the slide unnoticed. They do. Encourage me and cheer me on. And they do that for each other, too.

What many of the students tell me they love most about recess is playing and talking with their friends. Maybe, in that, is the wisdom, after all. This abandonment of ourselves to each other, with each other, for each other. Let us find ways to again be childlike.