My tendency in spirituality has always been towards the mystical - the timelessness of certain inner experiences that transcend the limited body, including the brain, our focal point of individuality. So the book This Is My Body, by Ragan Sutterfield, is both disconcerting and, it turns out, necessary. Necessary, because many of us see the body as limited, as a shell, from which we will be freed to spirit - which, as Sutterfield points out with great clarity, was never the message of the founder of the Christian faith.
It is so clear now. Jesus did not tell the sick to buck up and look to heaven, but he healed them, "with their own faith;" he did not spread mystical manna, but rather gave his body and blood, as a sign of his sacrifice and salvation; and, as the Nicene Creed of the Catholic Church clearly, unambiguously states, in the final days, believers will be resurrected, not only in soul, but in body.
How could I have missed that? But then again, how can anyone believe in a resurrected body? While we protect ourselves from the decay of the human body, in burial and cremation and in chemical preservatives, we all have closed our noses to the rotting carcasses along the highway. This, we know, is the way of all flesh. The better question is, how could Jesus believe in what he said? How could this be so?
Sutterfield recounts his own struggles with his body. Born into a strong Southern megachurch family (Baptist, I believe), he recounts how he himself was taught that the body was only a temporary vehicle, one that occasioned more pathways to hell (sex, drugs and such) than of resurrection. But the body mattered. His depictions of his own body - usually fat; as one girl in junior high stated, "you have bigger boobs than I do," - lead one, or at least me, to embarrassment. The body, I sometimes think - yech! Except for moments of passion with certain others, it is usually the repository of boogers, smelly areas, ugly hair, gnarled feet, and dandruff. That I have learned to look past the body - as much as possible - to get to the inner goodness of humans says as much about our culture of disembodied spirit as it does about me. I was not raised to despise the body, like Sutterfield - but somehow, I have learned to dislike it. It is a traitor; it gets sick, gives pain, and dies - and stinks. How could that be a locus of any holy man, much less Jesus?
But Sutterfield proves, through his great knowledge of Christianity learned in becoming an Episcopalian priest, that the body is key, to us as individuals, and to the soul.
Apart from scripture and theology, he lets us know through his own experience. After a brief marriage with a woman who found she could no longer be attracted to his fat body, he began to focus again on the spiritual - and in this, learned that his body was as much a part of it as anything. He became an amateur athlete - and then a triathlon athlete - and finally, an Iron Man, finishing the most grueling physical contest known, of swimming, biking, and running. He does not "win" - he is still, in some ways, the fat boy of his youth - but he competes, and he completes. It is not to win against others or even himself, but to fulfill the yearning in the soul for completion, in rising to greater and greater challenges to one's limitations. In the body, Sutterfield finds a vehicle for the exploration that we all crave, whether we know it or not - to delve into the last frontier, which is not space, but the soul, or, more clearly said, the ultimate, the source, God.
The Trinity - the Father, the Son, and the Holy spirit - show us a relationship in God that we mirror here on earth. It is spirit and body and relationships, the body given to us as a vehicle for the latter as well, for in it, we can suffer, we can kill, we can love - we can FEEL. And in this, we can feel for others, not in a fluffy abstract world, but in something with teeth, or, in Christ's case, with whips and nails. He rose again in body, not just in spirit. It was an ethereal body but a real one, too: it could walk through doors, but also eat; it could live forever, but also still boor the marks of his Crucifixion. Important, yes, this body, even central, to the Christian faith.
Which still, in spite of it all, leaves me helpless. I am always impressed when the priest in our church raises the host and sings "The mystery of faith, " as the bread is turned into the actual body of Christ, as Catholics believe. This on our own sacred bodies, too, leaves me helpless, for, with all the scripture and theology, I still know that the bread is no more body than any bread, just as our bodies age, die, and stink. Resurrected? I can't reason this. But I can understand, with a poetic vision, the importance and holiness of the body. It is a crucible; it does serve as a proving ground, its trials and triumphs an arrow to the soul. But resurrection? The mystery of faith is just that - and the source of our greatest creativity, for it is never finished. That is what mystery is; and so, in the mix of eternity, is our very temporal body - a mystery that defies, yet compliments, our immortality. A good book for an easy read, and some deeper thought as well. FK
It is so clear now. Jesus did not tell the sick to buck up and look to heaven, but he healed them, "with their own faith;" he did not spread mystical manna, but rather gave his body and blood, as a sign of his sacrifice and salvation; and, as the Nicene Creed of the Catholic Church clearly, unambiguously states, in the final days, believers will be resurrected, not only in soul, but in body.
How could I have missed that? But then again, how can anyone believe in a resurrected body? While we protect ourselves from the decay of the human body, in burial and cremation and in chemical preservatives, we all have closed our noses to the rotting carcasses along the highway. This, we know, is the way of all flesh. The better question is, how could Jesus believe in what he said? How could this be so?
Sutterfield recounts his own struggles with his body. Born into a strong Southern megachurch family (Baptist, I believe), he recounts how he himself was taught that the body was only a temporary vehicle, one that occasioned more pathways to hell (sex, drugs and such) than of resurrection. But the body mattered. His depictions of his own body - usually fat; as one girl in junior high stated, "you have bigger boobs than I do," - lead one, or at least me, to embarrassment. The body, I sometimes think - yech! Except for moments of passion with certain others, it is usually the repository of boogers, smelly areas, ugly hair, gnarled feet, and dandruff. That I have learned to look past the body - as much as possible - to get to the inner goodness of humans says as much about our culture of disembodied spirit as it does about me. I was not raised to despise the body, like Sutterfield - but somehow, I have learned to dislike it. It is a traitor; it gets sick, gives pain, and dies - and stinks. How could that be a locus of any holy man, much less Jesus?
But Sutterfield proves, through his great knowledge of Christianity learned in becoming an Episcopalian priest, that the body is key, to us as individuals, and to the soul.
Apart from scripture and theology, he lets us know through his own experience. After a brief marriage with a woman who found she could no longer be attracted to his fat body, he began to focus again on the spiritual - and in this, learned that his body was as much a part of it as anything. He became an amateur athlete - and then a triathlon athlete - and finally, an Iron Man, finishing the most grueling physical contest known, of swimming, biking, and running. He does not "win" - he is still, in some ways, the fat boy of his youth - but he competes, and he completes. It is not to win against others or even himself, but to fulfill the yearning in the soul for completion, in rising to greater and greater challenges to one's limitations. In the body, Sutterfield finds a vehicle for the exploration that we all crave, whether we know it or not - to delve into the last frontier, which is not space, but the soul, or, more clearly said, the ultimate, the source, God.
The Trinity - the Father, the Son, and the Holy spirit - show us a relationship in God that we mirror here on earth. It is spirit and body and relationships, the body given to us as a vehicle for the latter as well, for in it, we can suffer, we can kill, we can love - we can FEEL. And in this, we can feel for others, not in a fluffy abstract world, but in something with teeth, or, in Christ's case, with whips and nails. He rose again in body, not just in spirit. It was an ethereal body but a real one, too: it could walk through doors, but also eat; it could live forever, but also still boor the marks of his Crucifixion. Important, yes, this body, even central, to the Christian faith.
Which still, in spite of it all, leaves me helpless. I am always impressed when the priest in our church raises the host and sings "The mystery of faith, " as the bread is turned into the actual body of Christ, as Catholics believe. This on our own sacred bodies, too, leaves me helpless, for, with all the scripture and theology, I still know that the bread is no more body than any bread, just as our bodies age, die, and stink. Resurrected? I can't reason this. But I can understand, with a poetic vision, the importance and holiness of the body. It is a crucible; it does serve as a proving ground, its trials and triumphs an arrow to the soul. But resurrection? The mystery of faith is just that - and the source of our greatest creativity, for it is never finished. That is what mystery is; and so, in the mix of eternity, is our very temporal body - a mystery that defies, yet compliments, our immortality. A good book for an easy read, and some deeper thought as well. FK
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