Loving and the Body

This week in health…I had begun to write my update and entry for this week when I went to my church this morning and heard my pastor Jack Roeda give a sermon on the metaphor of the Church as the Body of Christ – one of the oldest and worn out metaphors used in everyday church functioning.  But leave it to Jack to make it new.  He asked this question: 

“What does your relationship to your body signify about the relationship of Christ to the church?”

This is an interesting question because there are, on a day to day basis, so many things that we find wrong with our bodies from pockets of unwanted fat to blemishes to aches and pains, etc.  So, what does this say?  I have met very few people in my life who are satisfied with the bodies that they have.  We always seem to be either in a diet or binge mode and to find any sort of a happy balance is difficult for the majority of people.  I know it is for me.  There are many days when I can barely look at myself in a mirror, or when I see other people or images of women (most of them completely unattainable except by photoshop), I find myself constantly comparing.  And I wonder, constantly, why I cannot just be happy with who I am?  In fact, I daily pray for this acceptance and try to breathe my way through moments when I just find myself despicable. 

What does MY relationship to my body signify about the relationship of Christ to the church?  Well, it signifies much dysfunction….perhaps a functioning dysfunctionality is the right way of putting it.  We go on, we survive, despite set-backs, pains, twinges, creaks, breaks, falls, and so on.  We go on.  We do the best we can.  Christ’s church is the same.  It has a self-image problem, and every part seems to suffer some breakdown at one point or another, just like us.

So, we find that the body, which should be whole and healthy, has many issues.  It really is an interesting, provocative question that Pastor Jack asked this morning and I would love to hear people’s thoughts on it.  The scripture passage is from I Corinthians 12:12-31. 

This week I did fine, OK, but just fine and OK.  It was Valentine’s day and despite the fact that I claim to be above all that Cupid true love cards and chocolate and flowers crap, I find myself lonely many times.  Loneliness doesn’t usually promote good health.  So, while I got a lot of work done, I just missed having company.  I didn’t really overeat or drink or anything like that, and I persisted in my good habits of exercise, yoga, eating lots of veggies and making sure I was sticking to my 52 pieces of health advice, but emotionally it was a downer. 

How do we get through such times as these?  And it seems so small, so petty that I should be concerned with my own loneliness when there are people suffering so much pain in this world.  And yet we know that loneliness, leading to profound depression, is right now and will be a growing cause of human mortality. 

Here’s how I get through it.  

First, I recognize that when I have a bad day, it is probably something I can learn from, and that I should find a way to reflect on it and use what I can to make the next time I encounter a bad day better.  

Second, I recognize that, in many ways, I just need to make it through.  You cannot get better unless you get through, so no matter how bad the news is or how awful the person treated you or how awful you treated someone else, or how much guilt you are carrying around, you have to get through and probably, most likely, the next time will be easier.  Many Psychologists believe that, while they should offer compassionate listening and advice to people, there is the fact that you do have to get through it and you cannot be blanketed and coddled at every step of the way in life.  

So, I recognize those two things.  Then I make sure I practice contemplative prayer and I try to reach out to a friend.  And I feel better.

Managing stress is one of the key ways to improve health and we all need to find ways to do it better.  I’m working on it.  If I have any new breakthroughs I’ll let you know.

What did go well this week?  

I practiced prayer every day, I ate pretty well, I spent a good deal of time with friends and even made a new one.  

My favorite thing this week was casting a show – Midsummer Night’s Dream  and enjoying watching the gifts of my students unfold before me.  There’s another way to use that metaphor of the body – a cast for a play is a body and it really does need ALL its parts – the brain and the eyes, the nose and the lips, the intestines and the bowels, the skin and the hair, the toes and the spleen….all of it.  Whenever I cast a show, I hope that the actors will understand that I am not just throwing any role at them, but choosing them for the gifts of who they are, and perhaps also trying to teach them a new direction that their body, their gifts could move in.  I am trying to apply my ideas and my living of a total health year to all areas of my life, including my work habits and the way I practice my creative gifts.  So, I went into this show, and into this casting, with an open heart.  I made sure I went in rested and stretched, and I reminded myself to always love each person I encountered.  This sense of being intentional to every person went OK.  I always miss a few steps and make some mistakes and I am still learning this process of making theatre with actors and designers and technicians.  My goal now is to value each and every person…to know them all by name and to check in on their work as often as I am able.  I want love to be at the center of my body’s health and the center of my work’s health.  As Jack ended his sermon on the body this morning, he ended also with this idea of love.  If love is not at the center of who you are, of the acts that you do, you can be the most creatively gifted member of the human race, but if love is not there with the creativity, you have nothing.

And with that thought, I actually am working on memorizing a poem that is about a humble love of the self.  It is another Mary Oliver poem this month.  And I will end my blog here:

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
       love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.