Embodied spirituality

Recovering what we maybe never had

I noticed a young lady shakily walking to the front of the sanctuary in line with others to receive bread and wine, communion, a symbol of body and blood. She was fragile and emaciated, and her clothes hung on her frame. I knew her story from requests for prayer on her behalf. She was deep in a years-long battle with an eating disorder. Knowing her story helped me see this sacred moment as an incredible contrast. Here a soul racked by a mental illness that had crept into her relationship with food was receiving a graceful offering of Christ’s body, blood, and life.

I sincerely wished to help her. However, I am utterly unskilled at knowing the causes or the help for such a complex illness.

Unfortunately, a couple of years ago, I heard she had succumbed to the effects of her eating disorder and passed away, leaving a grieving family, including two children. My mind recalled the moment of her trembling hand reaching for the symbol of Christ’s body and blood.

The body as the enemy

I’m not sure how they did it, but many of our faith practices have convinced us the body is an enemy, a pest, or, at best, a dispensable tool in service to joyless sacrifice. I’m not going to blitz you with grim health stats, but our collective read on the body is easily seen in our care for it. Survey most of our churches, and you’ll find an explicit agreement between how we, in the faith and those without faith, view the body. It’s something to neglect until we dislike it enough to start doing something about it grimly. And repeat that ad nauseam.

And yet we in faith communities have this lovely truth from Cole Arthur Riley:

For me, the story of God becoming body is only matched by God’s submission to the body of a woman. That the creator of the cosmos would choose to rely on an embodied creation. To be grown, fed, delivered—God put faith in a body.

In most of my churched upbringing, “flesh” was a path of evil, untrustworthy, wrong, and never to be celebrated.

Rohr and other writers helped me with this:

In A Spring Within Us, Rohr writes:

“When we split our mind from our body and soul and live primarily in our mind, the body gets underplayed and dismissed, and the soul is not even recognized. Even worse, our sense of shame and guilt localizes in the body. (I'm afraid Paul's unfortunate use of the word "flesh" instead of "ego"-as the enemy of Spirit may be partly responsible for our thinking of the body as inferior.)”

Balance

I’m not revering the body above all things; we’d have to go a long way in recovering its sacredness to tip toward that imagined error. The error of pride usually rears its head when a person compensates for a low view of themselves. Like a great many things, the balance could greatly help us. We are spirit, mind, and body.

To counter-program our old spiritual practices, maybe we start by realizing our treatment, or lack of consideration of our bodies, is out of step with a God who came into our body. Rather than the body being a source of shame or something to neglectfully disregard to avoid vanity, maybe we consider our child-like relationship with the body:

For instance:

Sonya Renee Taylor in The Body Is Not an Apology writes:

“I have never seen a toddler lament the size of their thighs, the squishiness of their belly. Children do not arrive here ashamed of their race, gender, age, or differing abilities. Babies love their bodies!”

This ease with the truth of us can be like reentering the garden—a place of waking in the cool of the day with our Creator. Unfortunately, instead of fearfully and wonderfully made in God’s likeness, at some point, we become wonderfully fearful of not having the right likeness. This creeps into our mind, and we release the first truths about us and our providing God, original sin — once again.

The answer is not in the industrial fitness complex with its gadgets, powders, and intense plans. Please use all the helps you can, but if the first message is to crush your spirit or tell you not to be loving toward your created self, even if it works, it’s not ultimately helpful. I’ve done a few fads (or ten) that worked but, in the end, weren’t helpful. See my rollercoaster ride below:

I’m in my early fifties; no one is going to ask me to move a soda machine. I can relax on throwing weights around. I’m not going to flip tires; I have AAA for that. So, my workout has morphed into walking, mobility exercises, and things I enjoy, which means I must move. For instance, I photograph birds, but that’s secondary to getting 8,000 steps a day. Pick what works for you to increase movement.

I ‘desk’ seated on the floor. People often say, “If I got down there, I’d never get back up.” My advice? Never stop getting down there. Because eventually, life puts us there.

I will drop a few links to helpful, sensible voices that allow for all types of bodies.

I’ll leave you with this from Riley:

“We cannot get free disembodied. There is no promised land without a tongue to taste the milk and honey. We may forsake the body in order to survive, but the truth is that we do so at our own peril.”

Be well, Feral Souls

The links. Click the image to go to the Insta account: