by Jan Nielsen
The first time I ever danced in public was at school, in the fifth grade. I don’t remember exactly why we were dancing at school; it must have been an indoor recess on a rainy day. But I do remember very clearly what happened that autumn day. When I danced, a bunch of the other kids laughed, loudly. As the new kid in school, eleven years old and desperate to fit in, I was mortified. I loved to dance at home, in the privacy of my bedroom, but after that day, I swore I’d never dance in public again.
By the time I got to junior high, I did dance in public, at football games, while I twirled a baton. Title IX may have been the law of the land, but in the Arkansas schools, all the money still went to boy’s sports, big time. A girl could be a cheerleader, a majorette (my choice), or sit on the sidelines. For girls, there was no soccer, no softball, no basketball, no running, no nothing. (I used to shoot baskets in our hayloft wishing I could play on a team, all 5’4” of me.) What physical education classes we had were a joke, and they weren’t required. Big time injustice, if you ask me, but no one ever asked us girls.
So sometime last spring, when someone took me aside and suggested I train for a half marathon, I first thought . . . me? And then I thought, why not? Better late than never. As I have pounded the pavement these past months, I wonder if, subconsciously, I have fantasized pounding out some retroactive justice? Things have changed in our schools over the years and I know my running has had absolutely nothing to do with it. But it was during a long run one summer Saturday morning that this sermon was born out of my conviction that the body is a sacred gift worthy of honor.
We are all born as bodies, as beings with bodies, but it can take a lifetime to learn to honor our bodies. Part of the path toward spiritual maturity is learning to be at home in our bodies. “Becoming wiser about spiritual things,” writes Krista Tippett, “ . . . has meant learning to live in my body, not just my head.”
We do a pretty good job of living in our heads. Our minds run all the time, sometimes faster than we’d like. But we can stay so much in our heads that we don’t listen to our bodies. We can run down a to do list in our heads, for example, while we deny our bodies’ need for sleep. Who among us has time to sleep 7 or 8 hours a night? There’s too much to do, we say. North Americans are perhaps the most sleep deprived people on the planet. There are, of course, lots of other ways we let what goes on in our heads deafen our ears to the wisdom of our bodies.
A few thousand years of tradition have encouraged us to ignore the wisdom of our bodies. Much of western religion has encouraged us to think of our bodies as just a shell, a mere container for the mind, the spirit, the soul. These containers, tradition taught, are more prone to the profane than the sacred, and therefore not to be trusted. Instead, the needs of the body are to be denied, controlled.
Whatever the religious tradition of our youth, and even if we were raised in no particular faith, this idea of the division of body and soul, and distrust of the body, became so embedded in western culture that it might as well be in the air we breathe. This body and mind dualism is the root of the body hatred some of our young people, and some of us, know all too well. Young and old know addictions and eating disorders, while some of our young, in their spiritual pain, cut their own bodies and bleed. It can take a lifetime of spiritual work to learn to bring body and soul back together, to learn to honor our bodies.
What does it mean to honor the body? We honor the body by caring for the body. “Care,” writes Kathleen Norris, “is not passive – the word derives from an Indo-European word meaning ‘to cry out,’ as in a lament.” Care is active, a cry, a prayer for life.
We all know the basics: enough sleep, good food, fresh air, moving our bodies as best we can. The basics are not what we “should” do or what we “ought” to do; the basics of care are life giving. Without them, we can get sick, both in body and in spirit. “Reluctance to care for the body (writes Kathleen Norris) is one of the first symptoms of extreme melancholia . . . . Shampooing the hair, washing the body, brushing the teeth, drinking enough water, taking a daily vitamin, going for a walk, as simple as they seem, are acts of self-respect. They enhance one’s ability to take pleasure in oneself and in the world. . . Care asserts that as difficult and painful as life can be, it is worth something to be in the present, alive, doing one’s daily bit.”
Depression touches nearly every life these days. Maybe you have known the pain of watching someone close to you struggle, or maybe you have known the struggle yourself. Maybe depression follows you around this very morning. Depression is not something to be ashamed of, but it is a condition to be taken seriously, for it can rob all whom it touches of life’s joys. Sometimes medication can be a lifesaver – literally. But some people don’t respond to medication. Some studies suggest that, for some, a change in lifestyle may be the most effective way either to beat depression or to stave it off entirely.
“There’s increasing evidence,” says Stephen Ilardi, a psychologist who studies depression, “that we were never designed for our sedentary, socially isolated, indoor, sleep-deprived, poorly nourished lifestyle.” (That’s a pretty good description of the contemporary North American lifestyle.) “If throughout the course of human evolution people were as vulnerable to depressive illness as 21st century Americans, (he says) we would long since have gone extinct as a species.” Rate of depression have risen tenfold since World War II. And sadly, depression is more and more prevalent among younger people. “Every successive generation,” says Dr. Ilardi, is at higher and higher risk.” That’s not good news.
But here’s what is encouraging – paying attention to the basics can help, and sometimes help a lot, sometimes even more than medication. The prescription, as endorsed by Dr. Ilardi and others, might read something like this, and it’s all about honoring the body:
(Whether or not we’ve ever known depression, it’s a prescription for good living.)
Get enough sleep and rest. Turn off the computer and the TV and go to bed. In the Bible, we find story after story of someone who, when they finally surrendered to sleep, heard the whisper of God’s voice in a dream. Sleep can heal the soul. Or get really radical and take a whole day of Sabbath in your week.
Eat real food. I need say no more on this one. You know what I mean.
Connect with people. We are isolating ourselves into sickness. Instead of sending another email, walk down the hall or across the street and give someone a smile. Find ways and reasons to gather with others. Science is teaching us that the very act of being in the same room with others, like we are right now, can be good for our hearts. A caring heart can signal another heart to become more peaceful and relaxed. We were not made to sit alone, for hours on end, in front of our computers. We were made to be together. It is true: we need one another.
Get up and move. It’s not so important what you do. Dance, walk, run, swim, whatever. Move so that you sweat, if possible. For some of us, movement can be prayer. In her book called Honoring the Body, (the book from which I borrowed today’s sermon title) my Divinity School professor, Stephanie Paulsell, tells the story of a father of a disabled child. This father runs every day and lifts weights several times a week, she says, with the hope that “even when he has grown old, he will still be able to lift his daughter from her wheelchair, carry her to the car, settle her into the bath. Offering the gift we have received the gift of our body – to others makes of our exertion, (my teacher says), a prayer.” Some of us exert our bodies to increase the odds, knowing there are no guarantees, that we’ll be around longer for the people, and the work, we love; with every drop of sweat, we send up a prayer.
Not all of us can move our bodies so easily. Illness, injury, aging and disability can get in the way. “It’s funny what we miss,” the poet says, “when everything . . . is gone.” Anytime, though, we can move our bodies, even just a little, while we still can, it helps. A short walk or some gentle stretching can help relax body and spirit. Whenever I get out and move, whether over land or in the water, my body takes my mind and my spirit to another place, a place where ideas, and sometimes whole chunks of what I later write down, flow free. Movement can be prayer, a way to bring body and soul back together.
When we begin to learn to honor our bodies, the life we save may not be just our own. Krista Tippett writes of her conversation with Matthew Sanford, a paraplegic who is an expert practitioner and teacher of yoga. “(Matthew) has observed,” she writes, “that the more completely we live in our bodies, frail and fallen as they may be, the more compassionate we become toward all of life.” When we honor our own body as a sacred gift, with daily acts of care, we start to see the bodies of others as gifts of the Holy, worthy of care.
Honoring our own body, as a daily spiritual practice, leads to honoring all bodies. No body, no child of God, should ever go hungry or homeless. It is nothing less than a sin that so many, right here in the midst of plenty, go without. In this town alone, we throw away enough food to sustain thousands – not to mention all the clothes and all the other stuff we toss. It is shameful. We need to find more ways to do something about it. If anyone is hungry in body, so are we all in spirit. When one body is dishonored, all bodies are dishonored. When bodies are dishonored, souls are dishonored, and we all hurt.
Scripture teaches us that the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, the home of the breath of God. I believe we are so much more than matter and molecules, more than our bones and our blood, more than how we look on the outside. I believe we each carry inside ourselves a soul, a soul that cries out for care and connection. Our bodies are so much more than mere containers for our souls. For all the knowledge we have gained, the link between the body and the soul remains a mystery. This much we know: when we care for the body, we care for the soul.
I believe our bodies and our souls were made to know joy – to dance and sing, to run and play, to touch and to care, to love and to be loved. The practice of honoring the body is one of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves and one another, for it is a path to knowing more deeply the joy and the blessing of life.
The Universalist Church
West Hartford, Connecticut
October 14, 2007