Category Archives: Spirituality
Trust and Body Theology: what my husband taught me about God
I saw this tweet last week on Anne Lamott’s feed, and I got to thinking.
In grad school, I took a class called Marriage and Interpersonal Relationships in which the professor talked about how people at bottom have either struggles with shame or trust issues. Everyone has a little of both, but either shame or trust is the key component in why we think the way we think, why we act the way we act, and why we end up in the conflict cycles in relationships that we end up in.
After a lot of soul-searching (and a paper we had to write), I finally came to the conclusion that I am a trust-issue person. Somehow, being a shame-issue person seemed better or easier to admit, but when I finally realized the truth about my own woundedness, I began to take steps toward my healing.
I did a lot of work on myself after that, which took years. I remember something a close friend once said about the healing she experienced in her life (as a shame-issue person). She said that the final healing came from her husband.
That’s what I thought of when I read that tweet the other day. I thought about all the work I did to undo the learning I had learned growing up that no one was trustworthy and that I had to take care of everything myself. I thought about all the work I did to learn to do more than say the words with my mouth that God is trustworthy; I also had to believe it in my heart.
But at the end of the day, the final healing came from my relationship with my husband.
When I read that tweet, I thought about how I trust my husband implicitly and completely without the slightest twinge of doubt, suspicion, or jealousy. If he says he’s working late, I know that means he is. If he chats on Facebook with an old girlfriend, I know they really are just friends. I know because every single day since the day we met he has proven with his behavior that I can trust him. I know because even when some embarrassingly irrational fear emerged while we were dating, and I acted out, he said the words I needed him to say and behaved the way I needed him to behave to prove to me again that I can trust him. I know because if he could see the irrational, embarrassing side of me with all the woundedness still left unhealed and still want to date me and marry me and love me forever, he was worthy of my trust.
And it made me think about God, too, and how hard it is for me to trust God. It’s easy to love God, serve God, praise God. But trust? For some people, believing that God loves them, that they are love-able, is the hardest thing. For me, believing God is trustworthy (especially believing that I don’t have to earn it) is the hardest thing. I’ve been slowly healing from this great lie I believed for years, but the final healing came from my husband.
My aunt once said, famously, that sometimes we just want someone with skin on. Sometimes, no matter how many Bible verses we memorize or how much theology we learn about who God is and who we are, we just can’t accept the truth until we receive it from someone with skin on.
That is the beauty of the incarnation. God poured all of that majesty and might and holiness and completeness and divinity into one small, simple, ordinary human being. After everything we had learned, after all our God-encounters throughout history, we just couldn’t get it until we actually saw, felt, heard, and sat at the feet of someone with skin on.
That’s how we’re made.
If my husband — a fallible human being just like I am — can be this honest, this dependable, this trustworthy, then SURELY how much more so is the God we love and serve and praise?
I’m no fool. I don’t expect my husband to be perfect. I know he is not God. I know he will let me down, hurt me, disappoint me, and maybe even betray my trust in him one day. But through his physical presence in my life, I have been able to experience the truth about who God is. All the Bible verses in the world couldn’t do that.
That is body theology.
Forward Friday: Are you more physical or digital?
Are you more invested in your physical reality or in digital experience?
This week we considered the possible future of the Church and of body theology as we become more and more invested in digital community.
This weekend, take the opportunity to assess your priorities. Where are you investing your time and energy?
Try the following exercise:
Here’s an example.
1) Take a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle of the page, from top to bottom. On the left side, write PHYSICAL. On the right side, write DIGITAL.
2) Throughout the weekend, log the type and duration of your activities. Anything that plants you firmly in the physical world, write on the left side. Anything involving digital community, write on the right side.
3) At the end of the weekend, tally up your time spent on each side of the page. Which side receives more of your attention and investment?
4) Reflect on the results of your exercise. Are you pleased with the choices you made over the weekend? Does the amount of time spent accurately reflect the priorities you thought you had? Did you discover anything new about yourself?
Forward Friday: Finding God in the Physical
This week we talked about how I learned to find God not in the voice in my head but in the voice of a thousand mundane, ordinary, regular, unexceptional, physical things that mean that I’m ALIVE and DOING something outside in the world with other people.
This weekend, take some time to reflect on the past week, month, or year of your life. You could journal, go for a walk, or share with a friend.
When did you feel most connected to God?
What activities, events, or movements created space for that connection to take place?
Were you in your head or in your physical reality?
If you’re having trouble getting started, I highly recommend Miles to Run Before We Sleep: Step-by-Step Meditations and Reflections toward a Life of Persevering, Risk-taking, Justice, Mercy, and Humility by Tim Hoekstra.
Tim has an amazing ministry and life story to share, and my husband and I were very honored to have been married by him last April. I’m excited to start Tim’s devotional this weekend and may be sharing some insights here in the coming weeks.
…and we’re back!
My August “pause and quietly think about” turned out to be more of a “work like crazy for three weeks and then go on a road trip.” I didn’t get as much time for silence and reflection as I had planned, but what I did get was a whole seven total days without one single moment of work.
Todd Lake, Oregon
copyrighted
My husband and I drove almost 3,000 miles on our road trip through central California, northern California and Oregon, went on one backpacking trip (one night), enjoyed seven different hikes (eight if you count walking along the smoky rim of Crater Lake), stayed in four different hotels, and visited with two sets of Oregonian friends — transplants from Chicago.
My brain got a glorious break from all the rushing and working and pushing and preparing I squeezed into three weeks before our trip.
But my body — oh my!
Here’s the thing I like about body theology. Since I first heard the term, sitting in that little third-floor classroom at Fuller Seminary about midway through my program, my world has opened up. I have been pushed and stretched and challenged to think about my body, my SELF, as part of my theology, as a full participant in the spiritual encounter of God in my life.
The thing I like about body theology is that it keeps me grounded. It reminds me that the ordinary, the physical, the tangible, the real, the messy, the mundane, the accessible — this is all part of how we were created to experience the fullness of life and completion of joy that we have been promised.
Theology seems like a heady, ethereal, intellectual, intangible mist that we grasp for but can never really, fully reach. Theology is such an distant, academic word.
But body theology brings all that misty intangibility into focus, gives it form, makes it grasp-able in the most literal sense. Body theology is something we can hold onto.
Weaver Lake, Sequoya National Forest, California
copyrighted
As Matt and I hiked up and down mountains, slept in tents, wandered behind waterfalls, slogged through flooded meadows, drove miles and miles and miles (and even through a tree!), I wasn’t having intellectual epiphanies about my spiritual life or about God.
I was using my muscles.
I was pushing myself uphill till I nearly had an asthma attack.
I was lugging a too-large, half-empty backpack I borrowed.
I was squirming in the passenger seat.
I was being lulled to sleep by the motion of the car as the miles peeled away under our speeding bodies.
I was alternately pushing sleeping-Matt and getting pushed by sleeping-Matt out of the too-small beds in our cheap motels.
I was racing the sundown to the top of a mountain.
I was stretching my sore legs and eating breakfast for lunch and snapping an unmanageable amount of digital photos and listening to a good book being read badly on audio CD and enjoying being on vacation with my husband and hanging out with his Chicago-to-Oregon friends and blowing my dripping nose on wads of toilet paper as we hiked under tall pines and complaining that my back was killing me and massaging my husband’s neck as we drove and a thousand other mundane, ordinary, regular, unexceptional, physical things that mean that I’m ALIVE and DOING something outside in the world with other people.
It’s easy to live in my head because I work from home and have very limited community in a town we are still adjusting to living in after just over a year of settling in. It’s easy to live in my head because I’m an introvert and a writer and prefer digital communication over picking up a phone.
Mostly it’s easy to live in my head because there is still a part of me that believes that in my head is where I will meet God, where I will mentally understand and logically decide and cognitively interact with the intangible-spirit-being that I grew up loving and seeking and learning to find with my mind. Faith seeking understanding.
That part of me is still pretty big and loud and commanding of much of my time and energy. But the part of me that is small and quiet and unassuming, the part of me that gives instead of takes, the part of me that is learning to rest and be instead of work and do, that part of me — the part that woke up the day I first heard about body theology in that little third-floor classroom — that part of me found its voice this past week in the mundane and ordinary, in the exercise and outdoors and movement from place to place.
That voice isn’t as loud or commanding as the voice of my head. But oh, how it sings!
An August of Selah
Hello, lovely readers! It’s been about six months since I began blogging regularly here at Holistic Body Theology, and I’ve decided to take the month of August off from blogging and dedicate the time to praying, planning, and preparing for the future of the blog.
Although I won’t be posting anything new, I’ll still be around, so feel free to connect with me and let me know what you’d like to see here in the future. Leave a comment in the box below, or hit me up on Facebook or by email. I would love to hear from you.
In the meantime, here are some of the most popular posts from the past few months to tide you over until I get back.
Sex is Good, Even When You’re Not Having Any
Reflections on Body Theology: 10 Things that Annoy Me about Being a Woman
Choosing Church: A Lament (Part 1)
Conversation: Are You an Ender or a Starter?
Bathtub Spirituality: Getting Naked Before God
Gender-Inclusive Language; Gender-Inclusive God – Part 1
The Spiritual Practice of Sleeping
See you all in September!
Forward Friday: Write Your Letter
On Wednesday, I contributed to the SheLoves syncroblog on writing love letters to our bodies.
This weekend, you guessed it, try writing a love letter to your body. It’s a strange and unusual experience, but you might be surprised what comes out of it.
This is a chance to break the refrain that runs through our heads, reminding us what we don’t like about ourselves. Be bold. Be honest. Be funny. Be vulnerable. Embrace the body you have, just as it is right now.
Even if you already have a healthy body image, this is a great opportunity to reflect on your unique relationship to your body. It is, after all, the temple of the Holy Spirit, right?
Not sure where to start? Check out some wonderful examples on the SheLoves website.
Not just for women! Men, you go right ahead and write your body a letter, too.
If you feel comfortable sharing, post in the comment box below, or just leave a link to your blog or Facebook post. I’d love to read what you come up with!
Forward Friday: On the Act
On Monday we talked about the act of writing it down and on Wednesday about the act of creating art. This weekend, take some time to explore your spirituality and personal growth in a tangible way.
All my journals from the past six years, except one or two I can’t find!
Here are some ideas to get you started:
- write it down in a journal
- create a collage
- create a mural
- paint
- write it on a t-shirt and wear it
- use play dough
- draw a picture
- take pictures
- carve or sculpt
- choreograph and perform a dance
- write and record a song
- finger paint
Come back and share about your experience in the comment box below. I’d love to see what you create!
On the Act of Creating Art
On Monday we talked about how something happens when we put tangible words on a tangible page, connecting the physical with the mental and spiritual. But not everyone is inspired by words alone. Sometimes we need something even more tangible, even more physical.
I don’t pretend to be an artist. I know I am severely lacking in this area and choose to surround myself with artists to make up for my disability. However, in the spirit of friendship with you lovely readers, I will share one of my poor attempts at collage — just to prove that sometimes it is simply the act of creating something physical even more than the finished product that affects us emotionally and spiritually.
The finished product below may not affect anyone else, but the act of creating it for me was a quite profound experience of emotional and spiritual breakthrough.
I’ll even tell you why.
In the act of creating this silly little collage out of scraps from a friend’s art box, I was able for the first time to fully accept myself as a physical being, with all my particular flaws and traits.
This is a piece of my story, from one of my journals, created my by own hand amongst friends on April 18th, 2009.
On the Act of Writing It Down
Something happens when we put words on paper with pen and ink. There is something deeper and more real about forming the letters with our own hands, producing something tangible and lasting. For all the many, many buttons I have pushed to put my intangible thoughts on the digital page, nothing quite captures the something that happens when we truly write the words. This, too, is body theology.
From one of my journals…written in my own hand with pen and ink while amongst friends on March 3, 2010.
I am passionate about connection, connecting people’s stories, connecting to God’s story. More than anything else, I want to change the world. I want to change minds and hearts, leave the world better than I found it.
There is something intensely intimate about story, about relational living. To be relational is to know another’s story, to be known by them.
There are so many people in the world who feel isolated, disconnected, alone, unknown. People have stories to share, but no one will hear them. Or they lack the proper equipping to communicate well. That’s what I love about tutoring writing: empowering others to communicate effectively so they can share with the world.
This is a precious gift and also an innate human trait, this connecting through story. That’s what I want my writing to be about. I want it to impact the world — touch and change hearts, connect.
E. M. Forrester wrote, “Only connect…” Is there anything deeper in the human heart than the desire to connect with another, to connect with the self in a meaningful and illuminating way, to connect with the creator and romancer God? God calls us the bride. What more intimate and passionate connection is there than between lovers? This is my desire for myself and for everyone I meet.
This is what I want my writing to do: create space for and cultivate this deeply intimate, romantic, scandalous connection with the almighty God who loves us so much that God gave God’s only son that we might receive the grace that enables us to commune with the one who knows us intimately and calls us by name.
By name.
There is nothing more connecting that calling someone by name; it is an expression of knowing and being known.
If my writing could ever facilitate something as earth-shattering and life-altering as connecting with God, ourselves, and each other, then I would have truly and profoundly changed the world.
Holistic Body Theology 