The body is in the midst of a storm these days. From afar, in a country where the conversation is not rife with the heat or ideology surrounding sexuality, gender, or reproductive rights, it is like watching someone be thrown into the air, tossed back and forth, turned every which way, handled by so many hands, prodded and picked at and proclaimed over with shouts and rage-filled cries.
For all the talk of caring for our bodies, there is more grasping and pulling and angry demanding, than care.
I read a caption this morning, from a woman who was despairing about the recent SCOTUS decision to overturn Roe v. Wade:
“I don’t understand why they hate us so much and why they can’t just leave us alone to live the lives WE WANT.
I had seven pregnancies, three ending in miscarriage, four going full term. I have four adult children now. My first pregnancy was at 18, my last at 26, and I will never do it again. If I got pregnant today, I would absolutely get an abortion immediately.
I will aid and abet any abortion (and any queer person) that I can, to protect those of us in the future who have had their autonomy and safety stolen from them.
Protect each other.”
It was important to read this.
This woman thinks very differently from me; I would come to very different conclusions about whether a belief in the personhood of a fetus equals hate, or the best way to support those dealing with pregnancies— wanted or unwanted, or what autonomy means, or what it looks like to protect each other.
But all the same, I hear her. I hear the rage and the worry. I hear the fact that we are all looking at our bodies, and trying to figure out who is in charge.
I couldn’t help but pull back, and wonder how the One who made us all is present in the midst of this. What does the God who first made bodies, and declared them entirely good, who formed and fashioned and delighted in them, say to all of us who are so sure we know what is best for ourselves, or for others?
And so, a manifesto, or a poem, or a stream of many thoughts, about bodies:
In a word, you are complicated. You are created, but free. You are singular, but part of a whole. You are broken, but entirely valuable. Your limbs and organs and the color of your eyes all come to you without your say in it, yet you have agency.
You are mass of cells and tissues and proteins that decide so much of your makeup, and yet you are a soul whose spirit sings at a volume greater than the mere sum of your assembled parts.
And there is more.
All things are lawful, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful, but not all things build up.
In a word, you are free. But not everything you would do in your freedom is best.
The parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor.
In a word, you are whole. But not every part of you will feel worthy, or even desirable. Don’t be fooled by the weaker parts of you.
Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor. You are not your own, you were bought with a price.
In a word, you are not alone. You were meant to use your body to nurture, to care for, to touch, another. At times, your body may decrease so that another may increase. This is the way of God in the world, it is a death that brings life. Don’t be afraid of losing yourself for another. You are not alone.
See the one who would not make God his refuge, but trusted in the abundance of his riches and sought refuge in his own destruction— and see the man who trusts in the steadfast love of God. He is like a green olive tree, waiting for the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.
In a word, you are loved. Do not mistake license for love. Love knows what is best, knows how we are formed, knows the potential of our bodies— for great good and for destruction. Trust in that love.
But also, be that love— to your body, to the bodies of those around you.
Love is patient.
and kind.
Love is not arrogant
or rude.
It does not insist on its own way.
Love is not irritable
or resentful.
Isn’t always “me first.”
Love doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.
In a word, there is hope. And I think it is found in the steadfast love of God, and in those who would faithfully, humbly accept that love, and follow hard after it. Perhaps that feels small and inconsequential. But it is not.
So so good 😊