Me, my Body, and I
“My body and I are continually in the process of trying to learn to be kind to each other.” ~~Polly Atkin via Jeff Chu’s newsletter
Tell me about it. You, too?
Last week at our church service, we sang, “Bless the Lord, O my Soul,” and it made me wonder what hymns there are about our bodies worshiping. We often (or at least I do) think of worship as something we do with our souls or minds, but what about our bodies? The first thing that came to my mind was a memory from my high school days. I was at a young people’s conference or retreat in New Mexico. Several of us were goofing around, and one friend started to overly dramatically sing the hymn “Let Us Break Bread Together on our Knees.” When he came to the line, “When I fall on my knees with my face to the rising sun,” he dropped to one knee, raised his arms, and pointed his face to the sky (which was so sunny he had to close his eyes). We all cracked up. So, there you go, that’s one song about worshiping with our bodies.
Another one that occurred to me is “Just a Closer Walk With God.” Kind of. We walk with our bodies, right? When I was a kid the Christian Reformed Church had an annual Cadet Sunday. Cadets were the church’s version of Boy Scouts. (There were Calvinettes, too, now called GEMS, for the girls.) The Cadet song was the militant “Stand up, Stand up for Jesus.” And “Here I am to Worship,” has quite a bit of our body involved.
Why am I writing about songs where bodies worship? Bodies have been on my mind for quite some time now. I wrote about this back in 2021 in the entry called “I am thankful for my potbelly.” In that blog, I linked to the story Hilary McBride told, which I still think of often, where she put her hands on her heart, talked directly to her body…and called her body “her” and “she.” Barbara Brown Taylor, in her book An Altar in the World, wrote:
…there comes a time when it is vitally important for your spiritual health to drop your clothes, look in the mirror, and say, “Here I am. This is the body-like-no-other that my life has shaped. I live here. This is my soul’s address.”
“This is my soul’s address.” My soul and where it lives both worship God. I like wondering about how my body does that. How does my body worship God? One way is using my voice to sing.
Knowing that everything I do is worship (“So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” 1 Corinthians 10:31—emphasis mine), the ways I can worship with my body become almost infinite. I worship with my body by treating it well, nourishing it, taking care of it, having affection—even love!—for it, being kind to it, as the quote above says.
Both in my previous blog and the quote at the beginning of this entry, the body is referred to as a different person. My body, her, she. In the link to Hilary McBride’s story, she tells the story to Jen Hatmaker. Jen often refers to herself as a different person. For example, she says that “Nighttime Jen” is nice to “Morning Jen” when she picks out the clothes she’ll wear the next day. Or “Morning Jen” is nice to “Nighttime Jen” or maybe “Daytime Jen” by making her bed. I told a friend about that, and it occurred to me later that I could be nice to “June Mavis” or “July Mavis” by doing as much packing as possible for our move now instead of letting it all wait until right before the move.
I find it helpful to think of my body or my future self as a separate person. Years ago, I read something about Anne Lamott saying to treat yourself as your own best friend. I’ve written about that before. I use it the most when I am harshly criticizing myself for stupid or mean things I have said or done. I ask myself, “What would your best friend Mavis say?” And every time I realize that even when my best friend Mavis agrees that what I said or did was stupid or mean, she still loves me, and she understands.
Thoughts?