The Art of Embodiment

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

John 1:14

“Kate Gilday, I love you.”

A month ago, I stood in front of my bedroom mirror speaking these words to my own reflection and feeling like an utter idiot. I exhaled, wondering why it could be so easy to say these words to other people, but so impossibly difficult to offer them to myself.

I stared at my facial features, taking them in one by one:

“I love your freckles, and your nose, and your jawline, and your eyes, and your mouth, and your cheeks, and your complexion – even when it’s covered in acne.”

I glanced downwards, blushing to take in the less-than-toned folds of my belly and unshaved legs:

“I love your legs and your torso and your arms. I love your levels of fitness and strength and flexibility. I love the way you look front on and side on.”

I wasn’t really believing much of it, but I continued:

“I love you in sickness and in health, in seasons of exhaustion and seasons of energy. I love your need for sleep and nourishing food and movement and physical affection. I love you and want to see you thrive according to God’s ways. From this day forward I choose to honour your dignity rather than bully you to be better. I choose to respect your actual needs rather than offering you quick and easy counterfeits. I choose to be kind in the words I speak to you about how you look, and your capacities and limitations. I choose to accept and cherish you exactly as you are – a temple of the Holy Spirit.”

I stared at myself again. My heart was beating a little faster from embarrassment, but somewhere – everywhere – a tension I didn’t know I’d been holding suddenly eased. I breathed in an out a few times, trying to look at myself through God’s eyes.

I am made in His image and likeness.

My body is good.

The Word became flesh.

~~~

For so long, I have alternated between ignoring and rejecting my body. While I've always been grateful for my mostly-good health, moderate fitness, and lack of severe disfigurement, I have spent large chunks of time disappointed by or ashamed of my physical self – whether because of its visual flaws, limitations in fitness, or burdensome emotions.

I have never suffered from intense dysmorphia, an eating disorder, or deep shame about my body’s past. I have never dealt with serious health complications or a chronic condition. And yet, so often, my mind is a whirlpool of messages telling me that my body is bad:

• ·      I resent sickness and tiredness
• ·      I bully myself for poor food choices
• ·      I get frustrated when I experience sexual desire
• ·      I dislike having acne
• ·      I dislike the fat on my arms and belly
• ·      I put on makeup to disguise the facial features I don’t like
• ·      I wear tight and uncomfortable clothes to ‘look better’
• ·      I choose not to sleep enough and demand that my body keeps up
• ·      I am hyper-conscious of sweat and bad breath
• ·      I critique and hide unflattering photos of myself
• ·      I get annoyed when my fitness levels don’t match those of others
• ·      I avoid singing in front of other people in a performance capacity
• ·      I hate being sticky or red-faced when it’s hot
• ·      I am ashamed of my body hair
• ·      I compare my body shape to others and become jealous
• ·      I change my hair colour and skin tone to look better
• ·      I feed my cravings with sugary foods rather than seeking good nourishment
• ·      I don’t take the time to prepare healthy and satisfying meals
• ·      I demand a fast pace of life and am disappointed when I get exhausted
• ·      I reject the seasons of my menstrual cycle and try to perform at the same level every day of the month

And these are just the “my body is bad” messages of someone who is within a healthy weight range, unmarred by scars or physical disfigurement in any way, and not grappling with the effects of illness or another condition. For others, their bodies are “bad” because they bear the inerasable scars of self-harm. Their bodies are “bad” because morning sickness is crippling their capacity to get through a day’s tasks. Their bodies are “bad” because the cancer diagnosis means that each day feels like part of a countdown timer.

Do some of these messages resonate with you? Do you find yourself plagued by rejection of your embodied self, or at very least a desire to sideline the physical world in pursuit of slightly-less-messy mental or spiritual projects?

I think it’s time that we truly began to incarnate the Theology of the Body in our lives.

Too often our spiritual practices fail to include the sacred dignity and life-giving capacities of our bodies. We think of prayer as something that happens within our brains, not an embodied experience and certainly not part of exercise, food, sex, and sickness. At best, we pray to avoid physical temptations and to be relieved of the various burdens our bodies give us.

And yet, we as Christians put our faith in a God who chose to become flesh. The Incarnation is the key event in our understanding of the physical world: Christ chose to descend, chose to take on human form, chose to experience the weakness, limitations, sensations, and capacities of a body. On the Cross, He thirsted. When Lazarus died, He wept. At noon in the Samaritan heat, He sat down by a well because he was exhausted. And by doing so He has “made the flesh an inexhaustible source of sanctification.” (St Gregory Palamas)

My favourite words in the Mass, which usually aren’t spoken aloud, are when the priest says, “By the mingling of this water and wine, may we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled Himself to share in our humanity.” Our human lives – and bodies – are lifted to glory because He chose to descend.

If we truly believe this, it has serious ramifications for the way we experience our embodied life. We are called to see ourselves and others as incarnate images of the God of the universe. We are called to experience Christ’s healing not only in our physical ailments, but also in our experience of shame and self-loathing. We are called to involve our physical selves in our lives of prayer, which includes not only postures of prayer and creative expression, but also a healthy respect for rest and the Sabbath. We are called to use our daily experiences with our five senses to experience a deeper sense: an awareness of the transcendent at work in the world. And we are called to savour our embodied reality as a gift from God, choosing to respond not with hedonism nor with fear of pleasure, but with profound gratitude for His goodness in creating all things.

This is a radical journey to make, especially because it often entails walking a very fine line between Truth and counterfeit. Gazing at your reflection in the mirror can quickly become vanity, or jealousy, or self-hatred – or it can become a prayerful experience of encountering the Divine Image in your own image. Investing time in rest can prevent us from being generous towards other when we choose laziness – or it can be an experience of deep renewal and release from slavery to expectations, busyness, and self-promotion. Looking after our bodies through exercise can lead to self-glorification, competition, and unhealthy obsession – or it can be a pathway towards mental and physical health that enables us to choose the path of discipleship in sustainable and life-giving ways.

Embodiment is an art which requires discernment and discipline, and for this reason, many of us choose to run away from it. We fear what our bodies aren’t capable of (attractiveness, achievement, immortality) as well as what they are capable of (lust, gluttony, laziness, emotion). It would be easier to live in the false security of a modesty that has self-preservation rather than self-gift as its object. But the authentic journey towards unity – that is, a profound synergy between our soul and its physical address – can only lead us deeper into the heart of God, and into unconditional acceptance of others in their own embodied lives.

So how to we embrace our Incarnate lives and come home to our bodies?

1. Get to know the image of God your body bears

Don't be afraid of taking a good long look in the mirror, and perhaps praying a similar litany of self-love to the one I shared at the start of this blog post. See in your smile and your eyes and your hands and the soft folds of your skin a unique and unrepeatable image of the God who embraces others. Make your gratitude specific in order to see how His love is made manifest in the world through the gift of your body. 

2. Invite Christ to heal any shame or resentment you feel towards your body

Religious guilt and secular fear of inadequacy both contribute to a sense of shame around our bodies, and a desire to cover them up. But in the beginning it was not so. Pray to invite Jesus into the wounds you carry - whether that is messages you've heard explicitly, or ones you've formulated yourself - and ask Him to replace lies with the Truth about your body's dignity and beauty.

St Columba of Iona said to "pray until your tears flow." Part of the journey of embodiment comes from accepting physical manifestations of emotion. Shame can be a deep wound, and dredging up fear and guilt will inevitably cause emotions. Don't run away from your tears, or feel embarrassed by them. They are a sign of deep work happening under the influence of the Holy Spirit.

3. Involve your physical self in your prayer life

As Catholics we do the whole 'sit, stand, kneel' thing. We receive the Eucharist into our mouths as food to consume. Within the charismatic tradition, raising hands, clapping, and even dancing are important parts of worship. We are capable of glorifying God when we sing, when we shake hands with other at the sign of peace, when we speak aloud the words of ancient prayers. Our prayer lives can and should be physical as well as mental/emotional experiences of Divine Grace. Invest in opportunities to make your prayer an embodied experience.

Another aspect to this is prioritising the Sabbath as a day of rest. We live in an age of hyper-productivity and a fear of stillness. By giving our bodies times of authentic rest, we can also begin to enter into a place of quiet with the Lord and attend to the sound of His voice in a particular way.

4. Find God in your daily life and sensory experiences

Cooking dinner, going to the doctors, working out, making out, buying clothes, gardening - these things can (and indeed, are already) spiritual experiences. Just because you are carrying out an action with your body rather than sitting in a chapel does not mean you are in any way separate from the presence of God. We can encounter Him in all things because He is the Creator and Sustainer of all things. 

It might be worth taking a careful look at the parts of your life that feel most separate from God, and attempting to understand why you see them as being separate from God. Do you believe deep down that future Saints can't have gym memberships? Do you see grocery shopping as a purely practical experience that has neither moral nor relational meaning? How can you remind yourself of the Incarnation in even the most mundane tasks? 

5. Savour the capacities your body affords you

Our bodies are the vessel for experiencing pleasure, making a gift of ourselves in service, creating music and art, moving around the physical spaces we inhabit, savouring good food, becoming present with one another through reassuring and affectionate touch. In each of these things, the joy and delight we experience point us towards God. Sensory and sensual realities are signposts towards the One who is ultimate satisfaction.

So often we err either on the side of rejection of our senses, or indulgence of our senses (hedonism). But God's way is gratitude. When we savour and give thanks for the ways He communicates with us through our bodily experiences, we come to a healthier understanding both of God and of the created world. 

Taken through this lens, we can understand that the sin of lust, for example, is not sexual desire, but the objectification of the body. Rather than allowing the body to be a focaliser of the Divine, the human body is reduced to a marketable collection of parts to be analysed, modified, and possessed (sometimes for sex, but often for cultural acceptance). Lust is the refusal to see God in the body of another, and take it only for its material value. 

And this is where love - human or divine - can be a great liberator in our understanding of our bodies. 

Not too long ago, I became aware of the fear and shame I felt when my boyfriend put his hand on my waist. "But he'll feel how soft and squishy your sides are!" my mind cried, "He'll judge you for being less than perfect."

Guess what? He didn't. Because love doesn't see the body as the sum of its faults and the ways it ought to be better. Love doesn't condemn or exploit. Love says, "Praise God you're here, lovely little body." Love is the creative force that made the world and proclaimed it to be good. 

Sometimes we don't have a human who can proclaim that goodness to us. But each of us has a God who will look in the mirror with us, put His hand on our waist (or whatever else brings us fear and shame and self-loathing), and say "My darling, it is good. Your body is beautiful. You are made in my image and likeness. In you, My word has become flesh."

AMDG

I’m indebted to Christine Valters Paintner for her wonderful book The Wisdom of the Body, which has provided much of the inspiration for this blog post, as well as for the intercession of Pope St John Paul II, the spiritual giant who gave us The Theology of the Body.