insight newsletter - issue 11.2

i n s i g h t on embodiment

For emergent Christians, worship, to be fully realized, must include the engagement of the whole body – the physical human. Implied in this insistence on bringing the fullness of our beings to worship is the desire to keep moving beyond the separation of body, mind, and spirit and to fully experience the sacred integration of our whole beings.

In this edition of i n s i g h t we open ten "windows" of body insight, all of which point to ways that our lives in Spirit and faith are enriched by our desire for interconnection between our hearts, minds, souls, and bodies.

1. Walking the Labyrinth as a Pilgrimage

The growing presence of labyrinth paths in faith communities over the last 20 years has been a remarkable unplanned gift of Spirit. The labyrinth crept quietly into our contemporary lives thanks to the visionary energy of Lauren Artress, who seeded the ancient labyrinth in 1991 at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. (See her book Walking a Sacred Path: Rediscovering the Labyrinth as a Spiritual Practice.)

Walking the labyrinth path is a subtle exercise of embodied spirituality: here’s the path; all you have to do is follow it to the centre and out again. How could something so simple be so transformative? Not every time, of course: sometimes it seems to be not much more than a pleasant walk along a circuitous path. However, like all spiritual practices to which we give ourselves for a moment, we have no idea how the practice is in-forming us for a lifetime, shaping us through our desire to be changed through the interaction of body and Spirit. 

I love that I can take a group of people to the labyrinth, make a simple introduction and perhaps some suggestions for a focus, and then join them in the pilgrimage. Look what has been achieved without resistance: a community in a contemplative act, using their whole physicality, integrating the work of body and soul, making a path of communal meaning together, and connecting to a spiritual symbol that is both pre-Christian and of the Christian tradition.

Gailand MacQueen expands all of that with outstanding illustrations in the wonderful Northstone book The Spirituality of Mazes and Labyrinths. When you go to searching amongst all the labyrinth books, no need to go further than this one, and the basic text by Lauren Artress.

Tim Scorer, spiritual director, author, and former management of Naramata Centre.

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2. Bringing the Whole Body to Worship

Sometimes when I’m walking a labyrinth in community, I’m reminded of the sacred act of walking with friends to receive communion in church.  In both situations we choose to walk toward union with the holy: in the case of the labyrinth, to the physical centre; in communion, to the place where bread and wine are received.

When we walk to communion (rather than staying seated in the pews), we are surrendering our whole bodies to an intentional path that takes us to participate in a bread and wine life in the world. This is a “get up and do it” declaration of intention. There are, of course, other sacred moments like this in the seasons of the Christian year: foot washing on Maundy Thursday, the procession of palms on the Sunday before Easter, the marking with the ashes of Ash Wednesday, the journey to the manger of Bethlehem on Christmas Eve, the enactment of the Epiphany pilgrimage of the Wise Ones from the East come to find the Christ child. Local communities of faith have their own traditions and practices of this kind both within the sanctuary and outside. There can never be too many!

Here’s the question to carry forward in worship planning: How can we engage the congregation in embodying the meaning of this story in a way that is invitational, inclusive, and multigenerational?

Tim Scorer

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3. Small Group Process Around Incarnational Worship

What are some of the ways that we can draw on group process to advance our interest in worship that honours God as the one who gave us miraculous bodies, not only for sports, sex, work, play, eating, but also for worship? Here’s a suggestion.

Invite a group of people from the congregation who are interested in exploring further how to activate bodies in worship to join you for experience, reflection, exploration, and leadership in this matter. The starting point is to reflect on ways that your faith community already welcomes the body in worship. Then ask them to imagine ways that this could go further, following certain principles that your group establishes (e.g. invitational, inclusive, multigenerational). Finally, look at ways to offer leadership in worship that could be reviewed and evaluated, with a view to gently moving the congregation along this path of welcoming the body to worship.

The word gently is chosen very intentionally; it’s essential to find ways of doing all this with great sensitivity and respect. You could easily scuttle the whole initiative by moving too boldly and too quickly. By involving a group of congregational members in this process, you are ensuring that you will have guidance along the way from those who through personal experience know the territory.

Tim Scorer

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4. Liturgical Dance

One can sometimes think of liturgical dance as a means by which professionals or well-trained amateurs enhance the worship experience using dance with religiously themed musical accompaniment. That understanding of the art form limits its profound possibilities for deepening the spiritual journey of anyone who can lift their hands and breathe. If “liturgy” means “the work of the people” then the people can do “liturgical” dance.

The founding mother of the dance-in-worship movement, Carla De Sola, opens her seminal handbook of dance, The Spirit Moves, with a prayer:

I pray that everyone, sitting cramped inside a pew, body lifeless, spine sagging and suffering, weary with weight and deadness, will be given space in which to breathe and move, will be wooed to worship with beauty and stillness, song and dance – dance charged with life, dance that lifts up both body and spirit, and we will be a holy, dancing, loving, praying, and praising people.

When we move our bodies in response to a thought, an image, a yearning, a joy, we inevitably shift from the verbal and defined to the realm of the spirit. We are externalizing, or expressing in our physical being, some internal impulse that is beyond words. Dance is this movement stylized, so it draws people into, as Carla says, these “mysteries.”

For me, dance is prayer. It is truly the best way I know to express my sense of connection with the divine – a channel of grace. It is sacramental.

From Moving Spirit by Lindsay McLaughlin (from Creating Change: The Arts as Catalyst for Spiritual Transformation.)

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5. Dancing in the Aisles

There’s a reason it’s called body language. Something like 70 percent of our communicating is done through our body (most of it subconsciously). This is pretty sophisticated stuff – giving and receiving signals from within and without all the time – signals that are meaningful on some level to our body and to others, and truthful. And we don’t have to say a word!

Body language means we are interconnected with all life and Spirit through the mechanisms of our bodies. 

In this video clip, some people use their energies to make a case for social justice by dancing in the aisles.

 

Ellen Turnbull, editor, Wood Lake Publishing Inc. and editor of insight

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6. The Sacred Intelligence of Our Bodies   

Union is the relationship of body and Spirit, something that our small egos get a glimpse of from time to time.  Avoidance of pain and chasing after our desires are a couple of distractions that get in the way of experiencing our wholeness.  If we release our intellect from having to “figure it all out and make it right,” we can sink into our body and let ourselves feel our experience. 

Great singers talk about how their whole body resonates each note they sing.  In the same way, our experiences and emotions all resonate in us.  We usually either get lost in the pleasure or pain of resonance, or we avoid both by shutting down our senses, shutting down the way our body gathers and communicates information.  With practice we can learn to rest in ourselves, body and Spirit, each with their place, in mutuality, in union, in communion. 

When we learn to feel and see at the same time, the deeper language of the body that is wisdom emerges. Wisdom cannot be forced; we can only make room for it to reveal itself in our body.   After we experience wisdom we may find words to describe it.  The words will only be the tip of the iceberg.  To build the capacity to feel our lives takes courage, patience, forgiveness, and above all compassion.  Body and Spirit work together in the process of transformation, a part of an evolving world.

Mary Millerd, spiritual director, teacher, and co-author of The Spirituality of Sex

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7. Incarnation Through Play

Play is powerful. When we play, we engage an act of humanization – we reclaim some of our God-intended nature. We also see glimpses of a life to come. Images of play, and especially the play of children, are central to God’s shalom, that time where love, faithfulness, justice, and peace indicate God’s reign (Psalm 85:10, Isaiah 11:8 and Zechariah 8:5).

In addition, God’s reign is seen in the incarnation (the incarnation refers to the Son of God “taking on flesh” in Jesus Christ). It is no surprise that Jesus promises life to the full, a life that invites a new relationship with God (John 10:10b). This life is impossible to imagine without being playful. We hear Jesus saying: “Let the little children come to me…for the kingdom of heaven belongs to them” (Matthew 19:14). Thus, when we play, we reclaim elements of our humanity lost by forces such as compulsion, conflict, and consumerism. We also celebrate the Incarnate One and a life to the full, and, for a brief kairotic moment, we are witnesses to the reign of God in our midst.

Jaco J. Hamman, PhD, author of A Play-Full Life: Slowing Down and Seeking Peace

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8. Spiritual Practice and Embodiment

How would you describe embodiment with respect to spiritual practice?

Here we are in the territory of presence. This is the matter (pun intended) of our own presence – that is, our own capacity to “be here, now.” Our bodies, as we learn to listen to them and inhabit them consciously and with respect, have a lot to teach us about living in the reality of this present moment (and not in the fears and fantasies of past or future). And each present moment in turn is the only place where we can meet and be met by the Holy.

How has embodiment made a difference to your spiritual practice?

It may sound overstated, but in truth the difference embodied practice has made to me is the difference of life and death. Yes, the metaphor of being ever more fully and truly alive as opposed to being in a sleepy state where I can be dead to “what is.” But also another layer: the physical truth of being awake and alive to Life. My body has an ever-expanding capacity to experience its own sensations and I (when I am awake and attentive) continue to learn from the physical reality of sensation (for example, that gut feeling that confirms or disputes a specific discernment, a calm heart that assures me that someone can be trusted). I know this to be true: when I am living in relationship to my body (which is not the same as driving my body hard and without mindfulness) my body never does lie.

Both in my own ongoing inner work (the work of a lifetime) and in my accompaniment of others in the spiritual direction/spiritual accompaniment relationship, I now know embodiment as essential to spiritual wholeness. The communion of Spirit and matter is some of the essential Great Work of our time, in both inner and outer landscapes.

Blessings. In the words of a great Eastern master, “May you live fully in your body before you die.”

Lois Huey-Heck, spiritual director, retreat leader/group facilitator, artist,
and author of Going Beyond Words: 10 Practices for Spiritual Unfolding.

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9. Sexual obsessions

Let’s be honest. The church to which I and many of you belong is completely obsessed with sex. It pretends not to be, of course, and constantly laments our culture’s fascination with sex. But this institutional projection and redirection can’t hide the facts.

Personally, I wouldn’t mind this obsession if I could honestly say the church was all about promoting healthy sexuality. Unfortunately, our obsession runs to the dark side. We fixate on sexual scandals and misdeeds and produce codes for ethical behaviour as preventative medicine, all while we lack the sexual maturity to engage in conversation about what a healthy, intimate sexual relationship might look like. (You wanna talk about what? Please! That’s just embarrassing!)

When it comes to sex, we are quick to identify “sin” but slow to speak of “blessing.” (And we wonder why we’re so messed up!)

There’s a lot of talk these days about emotional and other kinds of “intelligence.” I’d like us to talk more about “spiritual intelligence,” which I believe includes a healthy dose of “body intelligence” – the wisdom that our bodies are good and that sex is good, and that both are sacred gifts to be enjoyed (and, yes, treated with respect and care).

So come on people. It’s time to grow up and get wise. Let’s openly embrace good sex and chuck the rest.

Michael Schwartzentruber is president of Wood Lake Publishing and a co-author of The Spirituality of Sex.

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10. Body Awareness as a Feature of Spirit-Centered Leadership

If you have just opened all ten of these “windows” of body insight, then you have just experienced the leadership of at least six people who welcome the wisdom of their bodies in the pursuit of leadership. I think that the term “self as instrument” expresses that well. What does that look like in leadership? Here are four simple responses:

How do you experience your body as a trustworthy “instrument” in your participation and in leadership?

Tim Scorer

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