The Body Series: Some Closing Thoughts

Meet Lottie, in all her gloriousness.

(Yay! I did it — I got a bike!)

— 

We’ve sure covered a lot of ground here these last six weeks, haven’t we? 

It’s been a really different experience for me, writing a series for you on a topic I’m currently learning myself. But I’ve really valued the experience of learning along with you and sharing my thoughts, questions, struggles, and experiences with you along the way. 

As this series comes to a close, I’ve been thinking it would be helpful to offer a wrap-up on the territory we’ve covered and a bit of sharing on where I’ve landed in all this, at least for the time being. I’d love to hear where you’ve landed, too, and any changes you’ve noticed in your views and treatment of your body these last six weeks. 

So, some closing thoughts: 

• For me, so much of the body journey has to do with getting in tune with the truth that I even have a body. I spend so much time inside my head and my heart that it’s easy to neglect the reality of my embodied self. I’ve found yoga to be a very helpful means of putting me in touch with my body, as it keeps me in tune with my breath and the movement of my body and the stretching of its muscles. Also, being outside is immensely helpful, as I notice the feel of breeze and sun on my skin, hear the birds and the wind as I walk or ride my bike, relish the brilliant colors of the sky and trees and flowers, and listen to the other sounds of life around me.

• Viewing my relationship with my body as part of a formational process helps me be patient with this whole thing. When I think about my spiritual formation, I know that’s something that happens for a lifetime. It has seasons — times when God is teaching me one thing or another as a point of focus, and so I lean into those learning curves and allow them to take as long as they need to take. I can feel myself letting my relationship with my body take a similar course. I’m in a certain place with it now, learning certain things, and someday I’ll be in a different place, learning different things. This is a process that I’ll stay with for a lifetime. There’s no need to rush.

• God’s view of the body as good and necessarily part of the human experience has helped remove some of my antagonism toward my body. I’m becoming more loving toward it. More welcoming of it. Viewing it as something God sees as a very good gift and opening myself to the discovery of what that gift means. 

• One of the most profound ideas I’ve begun to carry as a result of this body series is the idea of carrying the body of Christ inside of me. This is something I’m going to continue to meditate upon. I think it will continue to deeply impact the way I treat my body, as it becomes a way of demonstrating my love for Jesus in practical, ongoing, daily ways. 

• Lastly, it’s been so helpful for me to seek out physical activity that is simply fun. I think I’ve always assumed that exercise needed to look a certain way — either running or swimming or biking or fitness classes at the gym or using a treadmill or weight machines — and it didn’t matter whether you thought it was enjoyable or not. You just needed to do it. Blech. Now I’m coming to see that different forms of exercise work for different people. I’m finding that yoga and outdoor bicycling work best for me. Yoga is a perfect fit for my temperament, and outdoor bicycling is invigorating and fun and never fails to bring a huge smile to my face when I’m feeling the breeze and the sun and am coasting along in the beauty of the scenery. The best part is, I no longer have to force myself to do exercise I dread!

What have been your learning curves in this series? How have things been changing for you in your relationship with your body these last six weeks?

The Body Series: Caring for Our Personhood

Today, in the aftermath of a particularly tender session with my spiritual director yesterday, I’ve been feeling rather raw. Truth be told, I shed some tears while talking with a friend about it this morning, and then I sat on my couch in a bit of “zombie shock” for a while. 

This can happen in spiritual direction sometimes. It creates such a safe space for exploration and discovery that sometimes as-yet-unrecognized truths will surface and be spoken aloud for perhaps the first time ever. 

That’s what happened for me yesterday.

So today, in my zombie-shock mode, I had a hard time getting going. I have a work project I’ve been trying to finish, but diving straight into it felt like a harsh way to treat my soul — almost like saying, “You go underground now. I’ve got other things to do.”

Eventually, I decided to run a couple easy errands. Drop off some library books. Stop by the post office for mail. Stop by the bank to make a deposit. So I changed into some workout clothes, pulled on a baseball cap, and headed out the door.

It’s beautiful outside today, so I drove with my windows down and took an easy pace, still feeling mindful of going gentle with my soul. And then, once I was out and about, I remembered that I’ve been wanting to visit a local bike shop for a while now and have had trouble finding the time to do it.

So I headed over there. 

The experience of that bike shop visit was so healing for me.

It feels a bit strange to say that, but it was. The gentleman who got paired with me for the sales process was patient and kind. He listened to what I was there to do — learn what I could about what bike style might be best for me, since I’m a beginner — and took time to walk with me through the difference sections of the bike area, explaining how the bikes were different and may or may not be helpful to me.

When it came time to test-ride some of them, he was infinitely patient there, too, letting me try one after another and adjusting which bike he’d wheel out next depending on my feedback about the bike I’d just tested. He answered every single question I had — and I had a lot of them. He looked me in the eye while I spoke, and he looked me in the eye when he answered.

But even more than that was the experience I had of myself throughout my time there. 

I gave myself permission to learn. To have an opinion of the bikes I tried. To ask questions. I would test-ride a bike and think, “What do I like about this bike experience? What don’t I like? What questions do I have about it? What feels awkward? What feels right?” I gave myself permission to keep asking for a different bike when I didn’t think the one I’d just tested was “the one.” 

It felt so good to do this. So caring of my personhood.

It felt like an alignment of body and soul — taking care of them both, letting them “converse” with each other along the way. And in the aftermath of what came up for me in my direction session yesterday, as I’m feeling tender and raw, it felt like one of the most kind things I could do for myself today. It felt like an extension of what I shared here yesterday: according ourselves a measure of dignity and self-care.

Have you ever experienced something similar, where you felt like you were caring for your greater sense of personhood?

The Body Series: Do No Harm

Today I gave myself a pedicure.

It’s something I’ve been telling myself I’d do for weeks — even possibly months! — because I’m hard on my feet and have a tendency to develop callouses easily. But it takes time to care for my feet, so I’ve been putting it off. 

Just after I got started, the phone rang. It was Kirk, checking in while he was grabbing lunch. We talked for a few minutes, but then he needed to hang up and said he’d call back shortly. 

So I decided to wait on the pedicure treatment until he called back.

I sat on the side of the bathtub with wet, soapy feet and checked in on Facebook. 

There, I discovered a trail of status updates by a friend who is attending a conference that includes a panel discussion of pacifism vs. the just war theory. You may or may not know that I began studying nonviolence and peacemaking about four and a half years ago, so I was quite interested in the views my friend had begun sharing about the conference. 

And I dove right into the discussion. 

Thirty minutes later, I still had wet, soapy, un-pedicured feet.

But the dialogue had absolutely lit me up. I love thinking about nonviolence — what it means, what it looks like, how it finds a home inside our daily lives, what it means concerning the broader world, how it interacts with politics and nations and citizenship and humanity.

I sat there on the bathtub edge and connected, once again, with my conviction about the dignity of every human person, about the power of love to overcome and transform violence, about the spark of God in every person that causes me to honor them and seek to never do them harm. 

(I am by no means a guru at this.)

When I picked up the loofah and began sudsing my feet again, I kept thinking about my nonviolence convictions. And then as I rubbed my feet and ankles with my peppermint foot scrub, my thoughts turned toward the care I was demonstrating toward my feet in that very instant.

As I ran the hot water over my feet, washing the suds and pumice granules away, I began to realize something: the two — nonviolence and the body — are actually connected.

I thought: 

If I’m so keen to care for and honor my neighbor, no matter who they are, should I not also honor and care for my own body? 

Perhaps caring for the body has something to do with the “do no harm” principle. 

I’m doing my body harm when I feed it junk food. But conversely, I’m treating it with love when I feed it living foods, when I do yoga, when I take the time to pedicure my feet and them smooth their skin with lotion. 

Can I regard my body the way I seek to regard other human beings? Shouldn’t the nonviolence principle also apply to myself?

What are your thoughts on the “do no harm” principle as applied to your body?

The Body Series: No Body Now But Yours

Probably about four years ago now, I came across this poem by Teresa of Avila and was moved deeply by it: 

Christ has no body now but yours,

no hands but yours,

no feet but yours.

Yours are the eyes through which

Christ’s compassion must look out on the world.

Yours are the feet with which

He is to go about doing good.

Yours are the hands with which

He is to bless us now.

—St. Teresa of Avila

At the time I first read these words, they met me in my sense of calling to be identified with the words of Isaiah 61, which speak of the ministry of Jesus to be one of healing the brokenhearted, comforting those who mourn, giving beauty for ashes, bringing good news, and setting captives free. 

I knew Christ’s heart in me had much to do with offering this tenderness, mercy, beauty, goodness, and hope to others. Being called the hands and feet and eyes and touch of Christ through this poem taught me a little bit more of how I embody Christ on this earth in these precious ways. 

Now this poem is meeting me in a new way, particularly as I continue to reflect on the mystery of the eucharist and how it affects my view of my body. 

For instance, I woke up yesterday morning feeling awful in my body. I’d eaten poorly through the weekend, and I was feeling the result.

I found my spirit feeling sincerely grieved by this — that by abusing my body with my poor food choices, I was not tending with care the body of Christ as I bore his body in me.

I drove around town yesterday, running errands, and I couldn’t stop thinking about this idea of bearing the body of Christ inside my own. Of my body being sanctified through taking his body into mine. Of his body living on earth … through me.

I’m coming to realize that the greatest difference in the way I regard and treat my physical body may have everything to do with my love for Jesus. 

I deeply love him.

The years of sitting in the dark on the floor of my life eventually led to moments of illumination that had everything to do with who he is and how he regards me and all humanity. The person I have become since that journey began has everything to do with him. There is nothing about the person I am now, 15 years later, that isn’t connected somehow to who Jesus has revealed himself to be to me. Finding Jesus changed my life and changed me. 

I love him so.

And so this idea of carrying his body inside of me through the mystery of the eucharist, this idea of being and becoming the body of Jesus here on earth … it’s deeply affecting me. It feels so precious. And it is causing me to regard my body in a new way — in a way that has everything to do with my love for Jesus. 

Caring for my body is a way of loving him. And that, I’m realizing, is going to make all the difference.

How does this poem by St. Teresa speak to you?

The Body Series: Our Bodies, Sanctified

On Friday, I invited us to consider how our participation in the eucharist — ingesting Christ’s body and blood into our own — might shed more light on how we are to view our bodies. 

The word that keeps coming to mind for me is sanctified. 

When, in the rite of eucharist, I am taking the body and blood of Christ into my own body, his being enters my own and becomes even more a part of me. Christ is in me. 

The Spirit of Christ is always in me, but perhaps the taking of bread and wine is a moment when Christ’s embodied life dwells more fully within me than before. I become even more of a dwelling place for my Lord. 

It feels like such holiness, to be bearing the body and blood of Christ within me. It is my body made sacred. 

What reflections have come to mind for you concerning the eucharist in connection to your body?

The Body Series: Eucharisteo

This is My body. This is My blood.

—

This post is coming a bit late in the day, due to a power outage and modem/router meltdown that happened at our house this morning and has taken most of the day to get fixed. So today’s entry will be short, but hopefully it will provide us with something substantial to chew on as we make our way into the weekend. 

How might our understanding of our bodies be influenced by our experience of the eucharist? 

A friend and I were talking about this over coffee last week, and it’s been marinating in my mind ever since.

When we take eucharist, we are taking the elements — bread and wine — into our bodies. We do this as an act of spiritual sustenance, but think also of what those elements represent: 

Christ’s body. Christ’s blood. 

His body and his life source, and we’re taking them into ourselves.

When we do this, we’re saying, in a way, that we want his blood to mingle and flow with ours. His muscles to establish themselves with our own. His eyes and ears and mouth and nose and skin and bones and flesh to meet with ours.

When we take Christ’s body and blood in the eucharist, how might that impact our bodies and/or our view of them?

The Body Series: Grace and Truth in the Body

All he does is suffused with grace.

—

A great deal of my journey into love had to do with learning grace. I just didn’t “get” grace. Why did I need it, really? Oh, yes. I’m a sinner from birth and all of us fall short of the glory of God. We all need it. 

But truthfully? 

That didn’t mean anything to me.

I wasn’t in touch with my “sin nature,” nor was I quite in touch with my actual sins when I committed them. And I most certainly wasn’t in touch with my belovedness. 

And so during that dark season when I sat down on the ground of my life and decided I wouldn’t get up until I understood God’s love for me, it had a lot to do with learning grace. 

Do you want to know what I learned about grace? 

It meant not having to perform. It meant being accepted exactly as I am. It meant not having to watch my every single move to the left or right, constantly gauging whether it was the exact right move. It meant the world wouldn’t fall apart if I didn’t hold it — and myself — together. It meant being allowed to be flawed and still being completely loved.

It was a revelation. God’s grace covered all my “sins” — which, strictly translated, means “missing the mark,” like when you’re shooting an arrow at a bull’s eye target. I didn’t have to hit that perfectly round and narrow mark with every single move. If I “missed,” God’s grace covered the miss.

God freed me from my perfectionism. That’s what God’s grace did for me.

Don’t ever deprive me of your truth. Not ever.

—

The reason I share this with you is because of something one reader, Katy, shared in response to yesterday’s post. She wrote: 

I think that I became more in-tune with my body when I became more in-tune with my emotions … I started paying a lot of attention to how my emotions were affecting my physical health, and how my physical health was affecting my emotions. Now I know that being sad or mad or stressed can give me stomach issues, and that eating low-sugar, high protein meals helps with my anxiety. The better I eat and the more I exercise, the better my mental state.

I read these words and thought, I need to understand that better. 

And the reason I need to understand it better is because my experience of increased emotional health led to gaining weight, to the point of being overweight for the first time in my life. Was I not as emotionally healthy as I thought I was? Did I miss a right turn somewhere? 

I think, for me, this has something to do with growing into a greater balance of grace and truth. 

One of my absolute favorite passages in the Scriptures is John 1:14, which says of Jesus that he was the “fullness of grace and truth.” In his being, he held them both in fullness of measure and perfection.

Grace. Truth. Together.

Sometimes I think the ongoing journey of spiritual formation can be summed up by saying it’s about growing into the fullness of grace and truth together. When I encountered my need to understand grace because the idea of it bounced off me like a ball against a wall, I was way far over on the truth side of things. I know now that I was pretty much like a Pharisee. 

And so I started to learn grace. And once I found it, I bathed in it. Soaked in it. Relished its amazing gift. Fell so in love with Jesus. Bowed down in gratitude. 

To the point where grace showed up in my treatment of my body. I savored rich foods in ways I never had before. I celebrated a lot. I welcomed the enjoyment of a good meal the way I was learning to welcome myself and those around me in full acceptance in the presence of God. 

Just like we can fill up on truth to the exclusion of grace, I think we can do the same with grace: fill ourselves up on grace to the exclusion of truth. 

But Jesus is the fullness of both. And that is perfection and glory and beauty and perhaps the real definition of love. 

On my body journey right now, I’m in the process of pulling truth back into the mix — while keeping grace alive. 

How might you describe your own body journey in the context of grace and truth?

The Body Series: What Creates Body Awareness and Body Care?

Aware of her tail

—

Yesterday, I invited you to share any lingering thoughts or questions you have as we’ve been working our way through this body series, and one of the responses I received came from Valerie Hess. Valerie just so happens to be one of the co-authors of The Life of the Body: Physical Well-Being and Spiritual Formation, which I’ve recommended as a resource companion to this series, and she was also one of the instructors in my graduate degree program in spiritual formation. 

Valerie asked: 

Why do you think some people have such a disconnect from their body and others are hyper in tune with it? Temperament? Training?

I love this question! And I’ve been wondering it myself.

I know a number of people who have always been active and have taken care with the food they put in their bodies, and I’ve wondered, “How did that happen?” Was it their upbringing, that their parents taught them to care for their bodies the way they do? Is it preference, that they simply love healthy food and being active? 

I think about my sister, who was always active outdoors and rough-housed her way around the neighborhood while we were kids, while I stayed nestled inside with my books, and she grew up to play varsity softball in high school. We were raised by the same parents, yet our preferences and temperament were so very different in this regard. 

I think training has something to do with it, too. One family I knew while growing up loved to play tennis together on the weekends. With regular activity and body-mindfulness rooted at the center of their family life, the children couldn’t help but grow up used to keeping their bodies active as a natural part of life and daily routine. 

Sometimes I just want to conduct informal interviews with people who are active and ask them: How did that happen for you? 

What are your thoughts on this? 

And if you’ve always had a sense of body-mindfulness or active care for your body, would you care to share how that happened for you?

The Body Series: What Questions Do You Have?

Hi there, friends. 

We’re in our fifth week of this series that explores the body and its relation to who we are, and we’ve covered a lot of ground. I’ve personally witnessed changes in myself in my attitude toward my own body — more regard, more tenderness, more openness, more willingness to care. 

Have you noticed changes in yourself too?

I’ve been thinking through where to take this series from here. In some ways, I could sit with what we’ve covered for quite some time, just letting it continue to sink in and allowing the small changes I’ve begun to make become a regular part of my daily life for a while. 

In other ways, I see the possibility of diving deeper into some of the additional resources I mentioned at the beginning of the series, all of which I’d highly recommend to you:

• Reclaiming the Body in Christian Spirituality by Thomas Ryan, ed.
• The Life of the Body by Valerie Hess and Lane M. Arnold
• Earthen Vessels by Matthew Lee Anderson

And so I’d like to check in with you. 

Where are you on your body journey? Do you have any lingering thoughts or questions you’d like us to explore in this space? Would you be interested in learning together from some of the ideas about the body that others have written?

I’m open to extending this series further, based on your requests and interest, or beginning the process of bringing it to a close.

What is your preference? And do you have any specific requests?

The Body Series: Starting With a Root of Love

Leaf heart. 

Taken in Nashville, May 2012

—

A great deal of my journey into the heart had to do with learning the truth of my belovedness. This is one of those things that had me sitting down on the ground, stubborn, unwilling to get up until God taught me what it meant for him to love me unconditionally. 

Once I began to experience my belovedness and value to God, everything changed. 

I’m getting the sense that our body journeys have something to do with love, too. 

I’ve been walking around this last week or so feeling a lot less antagonistic toward my body. There’s even a sense of befriending it, like me and this body are paired up in this life as partners — that God has given us to each other. I’m feeling a greater sense of respect for it. It’s becoming an actual entity that I’m in relationship with. (And maybe at some point it will feel less like an entity I’m getting to know and befriend and respect and more like just, well, me.)

I’m finding that the more I cultivate affection for my body, the easier it becomes to take better care of it. It’s easier for me to say yes to exercise because I know now that my body needs me to move it around. And it’s easier for me and my body to become better partners in our life together as I listen to what it has to say — what it likes and doesn’t like, what makes it come alive, what makes it constrict, what makes it feel dopey and hung over. 

I have by no means “arrived.” I still sat on my mat in my yoga class this morning and felt self-conscious of my flabby arms and rounded shape. I still eat foods I know aren’t good for me. I’ve not dipped into a regular sleeping schedule of late.

But slowly, incrementally, I’m moving in the right direction. And each of those little steps feels like a partnership and an act of love.

What is it like for you to think about starting from a root of love in your relationship with your body?

The Body Series: Doing What Works for You

Taken on Captiva Island

March 2012

— 

About three-quarters of the way through the yoga class I took yesterday, I had a bit of an epiphany. As I shared with a new friend afterward, it went something like this: 

I realized that yoga seems “meant” for me — my temperament, my pace, my way of being in life and with God, and perhaps (I’m learning) my way of being with my body. I found myself thinking that other ways of exercising have felt so harsh, and maybe that is one reason I’ve not gravitated toward them. They simply don’t fit who I am and the way I prefer to exist in the world. 

This realization came to me as I was stretching into a pose, leaning forward over my left knee while seated on the ground. The lights were off in the room, and all that could be heard was the continuous, rhythmic breathing of all of us in the room and the calming, gentle voice of our instructor, guiding us through the poses. 

This is such a place for me, I realized.

It’s quiet. Gentle. Soothing. Peaceful. Accepting. Even as it challenges me and my joints and limbs and muscles. 

When I woke this morning, I wanted to go back and do it again. 

In contrast, I’ve taken some other classes at the gym this week that haven’t had quite the same effect. The music was loud, the instructors’ voices abrasive. Sometimes there was a be as you are approach to the workout, but other times the instructions were strident and carefully defined (and usually defined well above my current ability!). 

And so this morning, as I tried yet another new class and found myself not quite connecting with it, I made a decision. There’s a way I can structure my availability to do yoga five mornings a week, and that’s what I’m going to do. It’s what I’m coming to love. I feel refreshed and invigorated and so happy after I complete those classes, so I’m going to just go with it. 

Additionally, I’m going to see what I can do to purchase a bike, and here’s why.

Last spring, I had the opportunity to stay on Captiva Island for a week with a bicycle as my main form of transportation — and I loved it! I hadn’t ridden a bike in so long, I was a bit wobbly on it at first. But soon, I was tooling around the island, taking the long way home sometimes, just because I didn’t want the ride to end, loving the feeling of the wind blowing on my face and neck and hair, a huge, invigorated smile on my face. 

About a month ago, I stopped by a local bike shop and tried a couple bikes on for size. Immediately, as I tested them up and down the street, that same smile lit up my face. I remembered just how much I loved that experience of riding a bike last year on the island. 

I’ve tried a couple cycling classes at the gym this week, and they’ve been OK. But they’re nothing like what I feel when I’m riding outside in the fresh air. 

All this to say, I’m moving in the direction of finding an approach to moving my body around that works best for me. 

What are you finding works best for you?

The Body Series: Be Where You Are

Tending Mary.

Taken at the Cloisters in NYC.

— 

This morning I took a yoga class where the instructor encouraged us to set an intention for our day’s practice. She suggested a couple ideas for this, ultimately letting us decide what was best for ourselves, and one of the words she mentioned as a possibility was acceptance. 

I knew immediately it was the word I wanted to carry with me through that time of exercise. 

I was situated near the front of the room, right in front of the main mirror-lined wall. Every time we undertook a forward-facing pose, I saw myself at the front of the class with wider arms, shoulders, hips, and chest than those around me. Many times throughout the class, I couldn’t twist my body very far into a pose. A couple times, my hips blanched a bit. My foot cramped at one point. My arms and legs shook with fatigue in some of the poses. 

There were so many ways I felt tempted to feel less-than. 

Thankfully, the instructor mentioned that word again — acceptance — several different times throughout our time in the class, and I was able to come back to a place of accepting myself where I was in that moment. Taking a class. Stretching my limbs. Challenging myself a bit (and in some ways a lot!). Growing more in tune with my body a little bit every day.

I think our journeys with our bodies need to include a healthy measure of acceptance.

Earlier this week, I mentioned that this can include going gentle with ourselves in our progress — letting every tiny step forward matter and letting the journey take as long as it takes. 

I think it also includes letting ourselves be ready when we’re ready. I’ve known for nearly seven years that my body was changing from the way it used to be and required some level of attention from me because of it. But it wasn’t until last year that I felt a real openness to stepping into that journey, and it wasn’t until now that I’ve been willing to pick up some of those beginning steps from early last year and look at them again. 

We are where we are. And one of the things I love most about Jesus is that he comes to where we are and meets us there. The gospels demonstrate this truth over and over again — that Jesus meets us where we are and is infinitely patient with us there. He waits with us until we’re ready. He converses with us in our current place of being. Then he walks with us, tiny step by tiny step forward, only as we’re ready.

I love that about him. 

How would you describe where you are right now?

The Body Series: Are There Limits to the Body-Spirit Formation Analogy?

A few days back, a friend shared that she’d recently gotten caught up on this body series and had a question for me. It had to do with this idea that the formation of our bodies might mimic the formation of our spirits. 

She said:

“Presumably, over the course of our lives, our spirits are meant to grow stronger and stronger — more vibrant. But our bodies, as we age, are getting less and less so. What do you do with that, in terms of the analogy?”

It’s a good question.

To clarify, here is where I see the overlap between the two: 

• The good things we put into our bodies — food, exercise, supplements, rest — interact with our bodies’ interior processes at a level we can’t control. We are just one part of the equation, and there’s a point at which we do our part, trusting our bodies to do the rest. This is similar to what happens in our spiritual formation: We participate, and God and God’s grace do the rest.

• Our bodies are meant to move in the direction of health, just like our spirits. They can certainly move away from health, and our spirits can, too, but we are meant to live with health and vitality at whatever stage of life we’re in, to the extent we are able.

I keep thinking of the older folks I see at my gym — men and women in their 70s and 80s who are fit and trim and limber and alive because they’ve continued to tend to their bodies as their bodies have aged. Many of them are in much better shape than I am at 34 years old! 

As they are moving toward the end of their lives, they serve as an image to me of what vitality and health can look like at an advanced age. In the midst of our decay, we can still be moving toward life.

Ultimately, though, I think my friend has a good point. 

Our bodies, in this life, will die. Our spirits won’t. But on the other side, in some mysterious way I don’t understand, our bodies join our spirits in different form. Even as our bodies progress toward decay in this life, then, that decay is not the end of the road for our bodies. 

Maybe the breakdown of the analogy has something to do with putting things in their proper order. Jesus spoke often of the inward person of the heart being of core importance, more than what our outward bodies do. (I’m thinking of the passage where he tells the Pharisees that they’re more concerned with cleaning the outside of their cups without realizing what’s on the inside of them.) Not to say that what we do with our bodies isn’t important, and not to say that the body isn’t important, either, but our inward reality is where it all begins. Everything else flows from it. 

And perhaps what I’m trying to say is that the process — what happens when growth is happening, whether in body or spirit — looks similar in both.

What are your thoughts on all this?

The Body Series: Going Gentle With It

Taking a tiny step forward. 

(Don’t those paws kill you with cuteness? They slay me.) 

—

One of the things I love about yoga is its be as you are approach. Several times during the class I took this morning at my gym, the instructor encouraged us to do what we could and to be content with that. She began the class with a reminder that competition — with others or even our own selves — was not the purpose of the class. She gave several alternatives for the various poses throughout our hour together, allowing us to judge what adjustments fit our current level of ability. 

It’s such a gentle way to be. 

Yesterday, a friend asked what I liked about my experience of the cycling class I tried. I told her the most meaningful part of it was the ability to be guided but to make decisions autonomously throughout the workout based on my body’s ability and readiness to try things. For instance, when we simulated climbing hills on our bikes, the instructor said the first hill should feel like a 6 on our personal scale of 1 to 10. We got to determine what a 6 felt like and adjust the resistance on our bikes accordingly. 

It was an opportunity to be in tune with my own body.

I find that I really appreciate that — especially as I’m a beginner at exercising again, and especially a beginner at cycling. 

It reminds me of what I’ve shared with you about the process of learning my heart. It took so much time. Years. Stubborn as I am, I would not let any person dissuade me from learning what I was trying to learn or from letting it take as long as it needed to take. 

I keep thinking about that heart journey as I go through this process of learning the body and then learning my body. It will take as long as it takes to become real, and that’s OK. Every step forward will be a celebrated victory, and that’s wonderful. I’ll only hold my integrity accountable to what I’ve learned thus far in the journey, and I’m completely OK with that. 

Be with yourself where you are. Learn that place. Let it become real. 

What is it like for you to give yourself this kind of permission?

The Body Series: Learning to Care for the Body

What my starting point feels like.

—

The revelation I shared with you on Friday has been a really big one in my progress to relate to my body in a healthier, more caring way. The idea that I can view my body’s formation in a similar way to how I view my spiritual formation … well, for a girl whose life’s work is enfolded in spiritual formation, I couldn’t ask for a more fitting “click.”

I think what’s so helpful about this is the idea that I just do my part. 

My part has to do with what I put into my body, how I move my body around, and how I view my body. The rest is up to God and the way God made my body to function and respond to my input on its own. It really takes the pressure off, even as it hands me responsibility in the matter. 

And so today, I tried a cycling class at the gym. It was hard, but not so hard that I had collapsed by the end of it. I ate an orange and drank water. I had some whole-grain cereal with banana for breakfast. I did our meal planning, went to the grocery store, and then had another orange.

And all the while, I’ve sought to tune into my body. The different leg muscles the cycling class worked at different times, as well as my stomach muscles. The feeling of strength as I pushed a heavy cart of Costco supplies across the parking lot. The sense that I have this body, and this body has me. Again, that everything I experience in the world and that others experience of me is mediated by my body.

This quote from Stephanie Paulsell in Reclaiming the Body in Christian Spirituality says it so well: 

“Such is the mystery of the body. Sometimes we know that we are our bodies, that our capacity for life and death makes us who we are. At other times, we feel that we simply inhabit a vessel that is inadequate to contain all that we are.” 

—p. ix–x

In some ways I am my body, and in other ways, I simply have a body. Either way, this body is a necessary part of who I am and my experience of this life. It will still be with me, in similar but different form, in heaven.

God is asking me to care for this earthen vessel. 

And so the challenge is to do so. To care for my body. To learn to befriend it. To love it, even.

How are you doing in your progress to do the same?

The Body Series: What If Our Cells Mimic the Formation Process?

Body and spirit, both reaching toward light.

—

So, here’s the kind of person I am. 

When I tumbled down the Wikipedia rabbit hole in my workaday education about the body and nutrition, my mind started spinning on the possibility that our cells mimic the formation process that happens in our spiritual lives. 

Track with me here a moment on this. 

• What if the enzymes our cells need in order to experience the chemical reactions that spur them down metabolic pathways mimic the work of the Holy Spirit or God’s grace in our formation process?

• What if the choices I make every day in my food consumption and exercise mimic my participation in my formation process through the practice of spiritual disciplines? 

• What if the outcomes of healthy body formation — health, vitality, energy — mimic the outcomes of healthy spiritual formation, which include a strengthened spirit and a greater capacity for love and good deeds?

The possibility that our body’s formation could mimic our spirit’s formation made me smile and shake my head in delight. Of course God would do that. 

Here’s a little bit more of what I mean.

When it comes to spiritual formation, I’ve written quite a bit on the principle of indirection — namely, that it is the process by which God handles our formation but utilizes our participation. We are partners in the process, and our part is to be faithful with undertaking small acts within our power, trusting God to do the parts we cannot do ourselves. (If you’d like to read more on indirection, you can find some more thoughts on this here, here, here, and here.)

I think the body’s formation might work something like that: I put certain things into my body, trusting that the mysterious work of God inside my body through mechanisms he created will bring about my growth and health. I need to do my part, and then let go, trusting that he’ll do his and that the outcome will be a body increasingly like the one he intends me to inhabit.

And so it made me ask myself:

Will I care for the formation of my body as intentionally as I care for the formation of my spirit?

Will you?

The Body Series: In Which Wikipedia Becomes My Teacher

After I had my first-ever wake-up call concerning the caloric value of various foods, I got curious. 

Reaching way back into my memories of high-school chemistry, I tried to remember what I had learned about calories. Didn’t they have something to do with joules, which had something to do with energy? And is the calorie in chemistry the same kind of calorie in food? I didn’t know. 

So I turned to the workaday teacher of all things ever: Wikipedia. 

There, I learned the calories in food are also referred to as food energy — and that when the nutrients in food react with oxygen in our cells, energy is released. 

I learned that our metabolism is what allows us to grow and reproduce, maintain our structure, and respond to our environment. 

I learned that enzymes are essential to our metabolism because without them, certain things that need to happen in our bodies will not happen of their own accord. Enzymes are required to create the reaction that’s needed to make those things happen. 

I learned that pretty much our whole body is made up of either amino acids (proteins), carbohydrates, and lipids (fats) — that they are vital for life — and so this is why we need to take these materials into our bodies: so that our bodies can be sustained. 

I learned that most proteins are enzymes which, as I had just learned, are essential for our metabolism because they create reactions our bodies need in order to keep functioning. This is why, I realized, proteins are so important to the diet. 

I learned that a vitamin is something our bodies need but our cells can’t make themselves. This is why consuming foods with essential vitamins or taking vitamins directly as supplements is so helpful to our bodies. 

I learned that proteins play other helpful roles in our bodies besides serving as enzyme catalysts in our metabolism. They also replicate our DNA, help us respond to stimuli, and transport our molecules from one location to another. These things won’t happen in our bodies if we don’t take in protein. What’s more, proteins participate in pretty much every function within our cells. 

I learned that carbohydrates do not help build other molecules in our bodies and that our bodies can obtain all their needed energy from protein and fats — although, of course, the body does use carbohydrates, when they’re present, to burn fuel for the body. Also, no carbohydrate provides an essential nutrient to the body, and our bodies cannot metabolize all forms of carbohydrates. 

I learned that nutrients are chemicals that organisms (like us) need to live and grow. 

—

In other words, I learned a few things:  

• If I want to live and grow, I need nutrients. 
• Some nutrients won’t be produced by my body all on its own, so I need outside sources (like certain foods and vitamins) to get them.
• Protein is especially important to my diet because it is involved in pretty much everything my body needs to do, not the least of which are the chemical reactions that make up my metabolism.
• I need to care about my metabolism because it’s what allows me to keep functioning in all the ways I’m meant to function in the world (growing, reproducing, maintaining a bodily structure, responding to my environment). 
• Carbohydrates are the least essential part of the human diet (at least, from what I can tell).  

All of this led me to think some more about formation, which I’ll share more about with you tomorrow … 

The Body Series: Yes, We're Going Into the Science of It

So, here’s the next stone that emerged in my wondering whether our bodies are meant for formation, just as our souls are: the science of it.

In December, a friend posted a question on Facebook, asking for health-related recommendations. Overwhelmingly, her friends recommended an app called My Fitness Pal, which allows you to track your intake of calories each day. 

Curious, I downloaded the app and started playing with it, filling in what I’d eaten that day. 

Whoa. 

It had been (what I thought was) a “light” day for me in the food department — just coffee and a few cookies for breakfast, a Triscuit snack for lunch, and mac and cheese with some sausage for dinner. But those foods I believed to be hardly anything pushed me about 1500 calories over what the app said my daily caloric intake goal should be.

I was pretty stunned.

Over the next few days, as I continued to log my food intake on the app, it was so interesting to learn about the distribution of calories in various foods. Foods like cucumbers, carrots, hummus, and broccoli had hardly any calories at all. Putting creamer in my coffee shot its calorie count much higher than drinking it black. Sausage, cream cheese, cookies, and Triscuits were pretty high in the calorie department. 

It felt like scales were falling off my eyes. 

I’m not scientific at all, and the whole rigamarole of calories, fats, proteins, and carbohydrates have always felt like running blindly into a wall for me. It’s just never made sense or clicked in any meaningful way for me. But here, in black and white, through an app that had pretty much every food you could think of stored inside its database, were numbers that showed me, in small and large amounts, what I was putting into my body. 

This led me on a bit of a scavenger hunt by way of Wikipedia, which I’ll tell you about tomorrow … 

The Body Series: To Each, a Unique Shape

One of our readers here, Ree Ann, shared some thoughts in response to yesterday’s post that I’m finding helpful and encouraging, and maybe you will too. 

She said: 

Because we are born into sin and because we each have our sins to deal with, there are (because this word will carry my point) deformities in our souls that need even more of God’s grace and our best attempts to learn what we are able to do to cooperate with Him so that our souls become as perfected as possible before it is our time to cross to the other side.

So it is with our bodies, as far as I can tell. One of the reasons that best portrays this, for me, is the differences that are in each body when it is born. There is the incrdible range of what we would describe as “perfect” bodies to deformities that make it nearly impssible to live at all and the whole range between.

What I see because of this is that as we become cognizent of the states of our bodies, we need to educate ourselves about the best care for them and ways of maintaining them and making them as healthy as possible.

God provides us each with a body. There is much to learn about how to relate to them. We must pay attention to our body language…pains, imperfections, conditions, diseases.

What I gather from Ree Ann’s comment here is the idea that every body is unique, just as every soul is unique, and that we need to “learn” our unique body, just as we “learn” our unique soul in our process of formation. 

When it comes to soul-level formation, each person has glory and, well, fallenness. It is the original glory God is seeking to restore in us in ever-greater measure, and it is the fallenness in us that God is seeking to burn away. What those look like for each one of us is unique, even as there are general truths to be known about each that apply to everyone.

So, perhaps, it is with our bodies. 

There’s a natural truth to the way the body works, but the way that nature plays out in each individual body is different. Due to genetics and environment, some have a faster metabolism and some have a slower one. Some are disposed toward exercise, having been trained in it from an early age, and some aren’t. Some are lactose-intolerant, and some aren’t. Some have a gluten allergy, and some don’t. And on and on and on.

Part of this process is learning our unique bodies — as well as the natural order of things — as we grow in relationship to our bodies and the way God intends us to live inside them. 

What do you think of this idea?

The Body Series: Its Formation

Perhaps the most arresting question I encountered when I began exploring how God intends for me to view my body is this: 

Are our bodies meant to experience formation, just as our souls are?

It’s the question I’ve been holding in the back of my mind ever since, and I’m going to put it forward as a tentative thesis for this series as we explore its possibilities the rest of this week.

So, here’s the back story.

The question came to mind as I was reading the introduction to Reclaiming the Body in Christian Spirituality. One single, obscure line — half a line, really — brought it about. The line read: 

“There is every indication that salvation does not mean getting out of this skin, but being transfigured and glorified in it.”

— p. xi

The line made me think of what will happen in heaven. 

As a spiritual formation practitioner, I believe our interior being is meant to form over time, conforming in greater and greater measure into the image and likeness of Christ. Our “work” here on earth is to attend to that formation that God is about in us. We’re meant to participate as God does what God wants to do. 

And then, in an instant in heaven, we will be transfigured into something more. Scripture speaks of creation groaning for the full restoration of that day (Romans 8:18-25). It speaks of the substance of our lives being refined in fire on that day so that only what is pure remains (1 Corinthians 3:10-15; 1 Peter 1:3-9). It speaks of seeing in a mirror but dimly now, but someday we shall see face to face (1 Corinthians 13:12). 

Clearly, something happens to us in heaven that is more than what we experienced on earth and has something to with the people we became while we were here — and the intent is for us to become, while we’re here, all that God intends for us. 

Could it be the same for the body?

I think about Jesus and how, upon his resurrection, he inhabited the same body he carried while a mere human. It was a body that could eat fish (Luke 24:41-43). It was a body that still bore the scars of the wounds he sustained on his hands, side, and feet (Luke 24:40; John 20:24-29).

Yes, it was a body that could walk through walls (John 20:19) and even, at times, appeared different than the body his disciples knew when he was alive (Luke 24:13-35; John 20:11-18; John 21:4). But it was also, clearly, a real body, and it was in some measure the same body as the one he had before. 

Perhaps in just the same way that who we become in heaven will be different — more full — than who we were on earth but also tied in some way to who we were while here. 

And so I am pondering the formation of the body: 

What shape are our bodies meant to take? 

What might growing in the likeness and image of Christ — in our bodies — mean?

I look forward to exploring these questions here with you the rest of this week.