Beautiful Bodies or Sinful Flesh?

 

We awaken in Christ’s body
as Christ awakens our bodies,
and my poor hand is Christ, He enters
my foot, and is infinitely me.

I move my hand, and wonderfully
my hand becomes Christ, becomes all of Him
(for God is indivisibly
whole, seamless in His Godhood).

I move my foot, and at once
He appears like a flash of lightning.
Do my words seem blasphemous?—Then
open your heart to Him

and let yourself receive the one
who is opening to you so deeply.
For if we genuinely love Him,
we wake up inside Christ’s body

where all our body, all over,
every most hidden part of it,
is realized in joy as Him,
and He makes us, utterly, real,

and everything that is hurt, everything
that seemed to us dark, harsh, shameful,
maimed, ugly, irreparably
damaged, is in Him transformed

and recognized as whole, as lovely,
and radiant in His light
he awakens as the Beloved
in every last part of our body.

—Symeon the New Theologian (949-1022) 

    Translation by Stephen Mitchell

 

Growing up in church, I often heard about "the flesh," how sinful it was; it could never be trusted, for it would lead you astray.

For decades, I ignored my body. What it whispered, wanted, hungered for. All the trauma that was lodged deep within it.

Now I see that those teachings on "the flesh" were poisonous. The body wants and needs to be heard, noticed, honored. How else could healing happen?

Wonder of wonders, the Divine presence awakens in our very fingerpads, digestive tracts, eardrums, thighs, corpuscles. 

I've become a champion for the body, no longer viewing it as suspicious, sinful, or evil.

I now advocate for soothing, stretching, twirling, toning, wiggling, dancing, napping, loving, and listening to this beautiful center, where, amazingly, the Holy comes to live.