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We’re Throwing a Healing Party–and You’re Invited!
It is impossible to separate the way we feel about ourselves from the way we feel about one another. – Wuellner
We’ve been touring Flora Slosson Wuellner’s Prayer and Our Bodies last week and this week, looking for insights to encourage our pursuit of holistic body theology. Just as body theology is about not only our own bodies but also what we do with them in the world, so Wuellner’s book encourages prayer not only with our own bodies but also with our community body. She writes, “The nurture, inclusiveness, and sensitivity which we try to bring to our own bodies is precisely the same nurture, inclusiveness, and sensitivity we are asked to bring to our community body.”
Chapter 8: The Healing and Renewal of Our Community Body
Being in community with others is hard work. As we learned through our discussion of Bonhoeffer’s ideas about community, prayer with and for one another is one of the best ways to come to love and respect each other. As Wuellner puts it, “The health of a community body depends so utterly on its tenderness and its honor toward all its members.”
A spiritual life, and a body theology, experienced entirely as an individual is deficient. We are not living out our participation in the incarnation of Christ if we are not participating in community:
It is in community that our true faith is revealed and tested. Just as our spirituality must be experienced in our personal bodies, so must it also be experienced in our community bodies. If our spirituality has become merely an individualistic exercise–if our whole self (body, emotions, spirit) is not part of our community context–we have missed the meaning of the incarnational life.
Wuellner acknowledges that it’s easy to overlook the difficult members of our community–the homeless, the disabled, the emotionally dependent: “How often is our politeness merely a way of distancing ourselves from honest encounter? If we learn honesty within our own bodies and hearts, can we at last begin to learn it with one another?”
She describes healthy community as having “not only nurture for its members but also openness towards new members, new ideas, new ways of living. A healthy family is not a closed circle; it reaches beyond itself in interest and concern or its spirit will die.” We cannot be exclusive and be a truly healthy community where “all are equally heard, valued, and nurtured.”
How often are we divided over issues of race, gender, and sexual orientation? How often do we hold grudges against past offenders, despise those who have wounded us (either individually or communally), and refused to be reconciled? Is this what it means to be the body of Christ?
What would it look like if we threw a healing party? Everyone in our community could come with their individual gifts and strengths, and we could celebrate being the body of Christ together. Then, before we leave the “party,” we could pray together for our community to be healed and become whole. Is there any better party favor than healthy community?
We can achieve healthy community, Wuellner suggests, through communal prayer:
Let us in our churches, prayer groups, and personal prayers begin with boldness to explore in depth these new frontiers of prayer for the radical healing of our family bodies, our church bodies, our racial, national, professional bodies.
If you and your community are ready to experience healing and wholeness as the body of Christ, I encourage you to throw a healing party. Begin to pray–individually and communally–for God’s healing to come. Wuellner offers this guidance as we enter into communal prayer:
- God is the healer. We are to be the transmitters, not the generators, of the healing light and energy.
- Face our true feelings about the person or the group or the situation. The feeling itself will never be a block to God’s work of healing if it is faced. We admit what we feel to God and let God do the loving.
- Our prayer is not meant to be either diagnostic or prescriptive. There will be changes, but they are not always what we expected, and they do not always come at the time we expect.
What To Do When It Hurts–and Keeps Hurting
[O]ur bodies should be loved within the problem, as part of our whole life’s experience. – Wuellner, Prayer and Our Bodies
About a year ago, my L5 disc slipped out of alignment. I’m not sure exactly what did it. Whatever the cause, the pain began to wake me up at night, then to keep me from sleeping, then to keep me from moving freely until I was in constant pain and afraid to move for fear I was making it worse. All my home remedies failed.
Since I didn’t have insurance at the time, I went to a free clinic, got some heavy pain medication (thank you, government funding), and was told to stretch regularly and the pain would go away in time for our wedding in April.
The night before our wedding, the pain was so severe that I didn’t sleep at all.
As soon as my husband’s insurance kicked in the Monday after our honeymoon, I went to the chiropractor for the first time. He x-rayed my back and discovered I have scoliosis and that my slipped disc was inflamed and was causing sciatica in both legs. So I began the long process of being adjusted three times a week, icing my back in 20-minute intervals, and stretching.
Now, a year later, I still have a slipped disc, and it still presses on my sciatic nerve when I’ve been sitting too long or driving any distance. The pain is more manageable now, and I have developed a greater tolerance for it. But I will be going to the chiropractor for the rest of my life.
Maybe one day I will be pain-free, but there’s no guarantee. All I can do is stretch, ice my back, and minimize the amount of sitting I do as much as possible.
Chapter 7: Relating to Our Bodies in Illness and Disability
Yesterday we looked at what happens to our bodies when we experience healing and empowerment. But what about when our bodies are in pain, sick, or permanently altered? How should we relate to our bodies then?
Wuellner suggests that we give our bodies some grace and allow them to do the necessary work to find healing and balance again. It’s not easy to do:
Somehow we must maintain the miracle of wholeness and healing when the body and mind work together in loving unity within God’s embrace and at the same time acknowledge the presence of mystery, knowing that we do not have all the answers, knowing that God works ceaselessly with our body and mind to bring light out of darkness.
In fact, Wuellner acknowledges just how hard it is to give our bodies the grace and space necessary for healing. We often get in our own way:
The very work the body is doing makes it hard for us to love and communicate with it. It is hard for us not to hate and repudiate our body when it signals extreme discomfort and pain. It is hard not to blame it, or at least ignore and escape from it, by merely deadening the symptoms.
My experience with my back pain is certainly not as extreme as some. I haven’t had to have surgery yet. I’m still able to walk, sit when I need to, and function virtually normally. I am lucky that the scoliosis is mild and that chiropractic adjustments help with the pain.
But I have to say, I’ve been mightily frustrated with my body over the past year. I’ve blamed and accused it. I’ve ignored it. I’ve beaten it into submission so I can get things done. Only my husband knows how much I have complained and cried.
But Wuellner advocates that we do not have to live in such a state of “bondage” to our body’s situation: “Bondage is the feeling that our lives are out of control; that we have no choices or alternatives; that there is no more “new creation”; that we are living in captive obedience rather than in relationship. God sets us free to discover that each moment, within grace, opens endless creative possibilities.”
How do we experience this freedom in the midst of our bodily illness or disability? Here are some of Wuellner’s suggestions:
- Enter into a warm, appreciative, listening relationship with your body before illness strikes.
- Be in close touch with your body’s wisdom as it works for healing.
- Ask your body what you, your conscious self, can do to help in the way of diet, rest, exercise, and daily life.
- Do not set timetables for healing, and do not push or force.
- Respect the body’s own rhythm of timing and healing.
- Remind yourself that the body has not suddenly become your enemy.
- Be patient, realizing that the body has to get in touch with the depths of our subconscious mind and do quite a lot of other work before the outer symptoms being to change.
- Be confident that your body hears you and is aware of your efforts to show grace and patience. There may not be a complete cure, but something will begin to happen.
I don’t know about you, but I need to hear this today. Instead of complaining about the pain today, I’m going to lie down for a while (because sitting hurts) and try to communicate some grace and patience to my body. I’m going to apologize for not being more understanding, and I’m going to wait and listen for any wisdom my body has to participate in the healing process.
If you are in pain or ill today, I encourage you to join me, and come back later to share how things went in the comment section. I’d love to hear from you!
My Body Is Rebelling
I ignore my body.
This can be attributed in part to my nature as an introvert. I spend a lot of my time alone, thinking and reading, journaling and praying. I live in my head. I process internally.
In my 28 years, I have at various times deprived my body of food, sleep, human touch, rest, and exercise. I have pressed my body into service to accommodate my intellectual pursuits. While I lived in my head, my body suffered and struggled and learned to carry on.
Now, my body is rebelling.
I’ve begun to feel like an old person with a worn-out, falling-apart body that won’t listen to me at all when I tell it to stop being silly and behave like it should. After years of being ignored, my body has gotten fed up. As I continued to ignore it, my body increased its volume until its (her?) cries have become deafening.
Here’s what my body is yelling:
- I’m tired from the many, many years you would not let me sleep until I felt rested!
- My shoulder hurts from that car accident we had in 8th grade that you never finished doing the physical therapy exercises for!
- My back hurts from the scoliosis you never stopped to notice until it got so bad we ended up with a slipped disc and sciatica!
- I’m tired from the many, many years you would not let me sleep until I felt rested!
- Various portions of my digestive system hurt from all the times you forget to eat or don’t put the energy into preparing a properly balanced meal!
- My wrists hurt from that pinched nerve we get in the neck every time you try to carry emotional burdens that aren’t yours to bear!
- My jaw hurts from all that teeth-grinding you do at night when you stay up worrying and over-analyzing instead of letting me rest!
- My eyes hurt in bright light from all the times you were too busy to stop and buy sunglasses to provide adequate protection!
- I’m tired from the many, many years you would not let me sleep until I felt rested!
My body is angry at me, and it is rebelling. It won’t let me get out of bed and do the things I want to do anymore. My body is finally making itself heard, and it’s yelling so loudly that I can’t help but be the one to submit this time.
Over the last few months, I have begun to learn to listen to my body. I sleep when I am tired. I eat when I am hungry, and when I can’t tell if I’m hungry or not, I try to eat anyway. I wear sunglasses pretty much all the time, even when I drive at night. I wear a mouth guard to keep myself from grinding my teeth even though it makes me look ridiculous and hard to understand when I talk. I stay in bed and rest instead of “being productive.” I do my prescribed stretches and ball exercises to help loosen up my back. I lie down or stand instead of sitting to ease the pressure on my sciatic nerve.
These may seem like little things, small changes that don’t matter much. But the change isn’t small at all. It’s huge. I have lived so much of my life in opposition to my body, or at least out of touch with it. I have lived like a docetist or gnostic–more concerned with the life of the mind than the life of the body. I have lived my life disconnected from myself, and that is not what Jesus had in mind when he came into the world to complete our joy and bring us the fullness of life. I have talked about the incarnation of Jesus, but I haven’t lived like I value my body as much as I value my mind.
So I’m making a change. I still have a long way to go, but slowly I am learning to pay attention to my body and adjust my lifestyle to fit its needs.
To give me a place to start, I’ve been reading Prayer and Our Bodies by Flora Slosson Wuellner. This week, I’ll give you a little taste of what she has to say about the connection between our spiritual selves and our physical selves.
For today, I’ll leave you with some of Paul’s words to the Corinthians:
For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. (2Cor 5:4)
What has your body been telling you lately? Share your answer in a comment below to join the conversation.
Holistic Body Theology 