The below is a short audio essay on how my body has guided me to wholeness. The essay text is also below.
A therapist I used to see always said the body never lies. Thoughts can lie. Words can deceive, but the gut will not betray you. Your body will always tell you the truth about how you feel. Whether in the tightness of the jaw, the churning in the belly, the sudden sharp pain in the chest. The search for truth then starts with listening to the body.
Before I could listen though, I needed to search for the parts of me dismembered. Some parts lost, some hidden, some crouching in corners. Some parts -- those deemed acceptable -- paraded out. Beauty queens on floats waving with meticulous, controlled motion. Sweet, sanctified and sanitized. The other parts -- the shameful ones -- shoved into the dark and locked up. The wild women fighting against the voices that keep me hiding, keep me crouching, keep me small and doubting.
In the white evangelical church tradition of my youth, the word “broken” was often used to describe submission to God. It was praised as a good thing to be because then God could use you. I learned that being broken meant tearing myself into pieces like bread at communion. I learned that being broken meant living with an empty vessel. I learned to offer my body as a living sacrifice, for this was my acceptable act of worship. I learned to break her into pieces, but never to listen to her cries. I learned that the flesh was weak and sinful, so that voice needed to be silenced. I was to listen to the voice pushing me to partition my body in order to place her on the altar. But to what god? And to what purpose? And did my God truly want me dismembered?
I searched. Pieces of me scattered across the earth, the truth locked up inside my being. Over and over building new cages within myself where I cowered. I longed for my inner light to liberate myself, but I was taught that my inner voice was not to be trusted. After all Scripture says:
The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.
The flesh is weak.
Bring the flesh, the body into submission.
Or as Paul said: So then how many times did I beat my body like a slave, so that I would not be disqualified for the prize?
The body, and inherently the intuition she carried, was a dangerous, fickle thing with the power to lead one astray.
After a full working week for the lay people in the congregation, church on Sunday mornings involved more work than rest. Setting up and taking down equipment and chairs, serving food, cleaning up. Rest seemed equated with service, so the Sabbath meant going to church and serving, but I didn’t often hear encouragement to take time to care for the body. I didn’t often see or hear people talk about tuning into what they personally find rejuvenating, so I learned to stretch my body’s capacity. Even if my body was tired and calling for rest. Even if my bones were weary and calling for play. Even if my heart was heavy and calling for tears. The admonition was church, service, fellowship. And to participate in these things religiously even if you felt tired, felt the need for vigor or felt the weight of grief in your body.
While these practices can have positive benefits and call to light that sometimes the thing you don’t feel like doing is the very thing you need, I learned to follow external rules rather than learning to tune into my body’s needs. I learned to consistently choose to do things I didn’t want to because I was supposed to, even though I felt my body’s resistance to it. I felt guilty for wanting to experience pleasure and happiness because pleasure was deceptive and happiness was shallow compared to the everlasting joy of service in God’s Kingdom.
I was never taught that my body was a credible witness to my life.
Despite this reality, my body was faithful in telling me the truth. My body -- more times than I could have imagined -- has saved me in spite of my negligence and smothering her voice under the grind of systems determined to keep me dismembered. She became my very salvation from a life that would have enshrouded me. My body knew I was more alive than church walls would let me be.
Outside of church doors, I learned that my body could feel so many things. I learned that those feelings could guide me, serve me, protect me, teach me, celebrate and pleasure me. The body--my body--is a temple. My drum is my heartbeat. My heartbeat is a drum -- coursing rhythm and blood through me.
If church was meant to be a place of celebration, then my whole body by itself is a choir. I didn’t know it was possible to feel so many things like cymbals resounding throughout me. My hips, a parade, dancing all the way to freedom up from the valley of my back. My breasts, joyful mountains erupting in song. My life is a body and my body is alive, and my body is a celebration of life!
Heart carousing in rhythm—
Limbs reveling in motion!
Come marvel that my hips are rivers!
Water flowing from my mountain on high.
And is not my skin a chorus of jubilation?
Did not my feet run toward freedom?
Did they not teach me how to dance when still in chains?
Did not my legs lead me through waters of darkness?
Did not my eyes see the silver lining between dawn and daybreak--
My hands pulling that line from the sky into my lips in prayer?
From between my legs comes life.
I give thanks for temples of flesh,
for when the body of faith has failed me,
my body has led me back to living waters.