Living an Embodied Faith
An invitation to live a faith that welcomes your whole self (mind, body, soul)
It was a wounded part of me, desperate to be reacquainted with the Emmanuel (“God with us”) God, that first went searching. When I speak of Emmanuel, I mean the Jesus who scraps a God who is indifferent to human condition and dives headlong into the valley of my human struggle (Brennan Manning, The Relentless Tenderness of Jesus). I mean the Emmanuel God I found for the first time in a hospital room as I watched the ultrasound in front of me remain still – no heartbeat. In the aftermath of my miscarriage and subsequent complications in 2020, God revealed Herself to me as a mother hen, with me resting under Her wings for the duration of the painful healing period. Even still, grief lingered. But this time I did not reach for theology books. Instead, I held tight to the tenderness of this truth from Brennan Manning: “There is nothing that Jesus does not understand about the heartache that hangs like a cloud over the valley of history.”
In late 2020, I was deep in my deconstruction journey when I came across this quote by Thomas Keating in Intimacy with God that reflected the clarity of the longing growing in my heart: “As our idea of God expands, there is no word, no way, no gesture, that can articulate it anymore. Hence we fall into silence, the place we should have been in the first place.” Now I believe God delights in how my mind takes pleasure in analyzing the world using systems, structures, and paradigms. In fact, They made me this way. But when I softened in my quest to define God, Their compassionate nature revealed the humanity of God in my interior stillness. In the moment when there were no words or explanation, my body and its feelings were the only thing that kept me tethered to God. Which brings me to my present journey of spiritual evolution, where bringing physical, tangible expression to my faith has given me space to breathe.
“Imago dei” is an embodied belief, meaning since we are made in the image of God, we have access to God in the totality of our being (body, mind, and soul). But not only access, we are the physical dwelling place of the Divine. St. Theresa of Avila said it this way:“Christ has no body now but yours, No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes which [Christ] looks with compassion this world…Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.” In this way, practices, like stillness and meditation, can produce an awareness of God in us our bodies cannot help but authenticate it.
Recently I’ve begun to lead some of these mindfulness practices at my church in the form of Centering Prayer, mindfulness hikes/forest bathing, and short grounding practices. The response was overwhelming as our community continues to heal from the mental toll of a post-pandemic society. As we step into the next year, I, along with three others, will work to build up a team from our community that can encourage mental and spiritual healing to our congregation through grounding and embodiment practices. And still, I remain curious about who else and what other faith communities are longing for practices that teach embodiment? If you’re here, my guess is you are too.
“Christ has no body now but yours, No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes which [Christ] looks with compassion this world…Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.”
- Saint Theresa of Avila
You are not alone in wanting a faith that you can bring your whole self to. A faith that doesn’t stagnates in the intellectual mind games of “belief” but one that engages your mind, body, and spirit. And I’m inviting you to feel the grounding truth that your whole body is allowed to take space on this earth — for your the body is the indwelling of the Divine and the seat of your spirituality.
For the next 5 weeks I invite you to follow along as I learn, experience, and write about a series of practices meant to deepen my awareness of God. Each week I’ll write about how this practice can encourage living out a faith that is connected to your whole self, and then share a way you can practice this in your every day life.
Subscribe and join me on this journey of bring our whole selves into our faith, starting November 15th, 2022!