Just Imagine

• Please remember that Council is today after Church
• February 17th is our annual Midwinter Afternoon Tea (please RSVP)
• Discussion Group meets after church on the last Sunday of each month

I often reflect back on my first meeting one of my friends/colleagues/mentors.  We were sitting in the back of a yoga teacher training with our group.  Eventually, the usual introductions happened.  “What do you do?”  You know, what’s your “real” job, like the things we love aren’t “real” work, but that’s another story for another day.  He said he was a minister.  

My brain tried to sort through “yoga” and “minister” together.  Yes, I know this is very funny now, but at the time, this idea was “new” (to me). Remember that “lesson” as kids: which one of these things is not like the other?  What thing “doesn’t fit”?  Which is also a whole other story of what are we teaching?  But that’s what I was doing…how do these “fit”…or not?  Maybe it was just unusual.  Unusual things are so great!  They get us to rethink what we think we know to be true and (hopefully) change our way of thinking. My friend helped me reshape what I thought I knew and was holding onto. He helped me more deeply about life and Love and Grace He helped me to soften out of the “boxes” and “separate” to find more…tenderness. 

I had some (weird, I admit that now) preconceived notions of both yoga and minister.  These two things were hard to match.  Yoga was about the body.  Minister was about, well, not the body. I’d also, by that time, heard enough times that “yoga” was something terrible and bad and that my immortal soul was in jeopardy for practicing yoga. The opposing side of: one of these things is not like the other. These things don’t “fit” and so we “separate”. One thing is good and the other thing is bad, no in between. There’s fear and then defensiveness. There’s that fear thing again. You can’t have both, so you have to choose one or the other. 

Body or spirit, not both. Choose. It’s interesting how pervasive our impressions are from books and news and media are. There’s so much about the body as a separate thing to be controlled…with fasting, deprivation, and abstinence often to the point of severe illness.  Saints and mystics portrayed as these self denial types of people or people who had been through such trials of wasting that God appeared. Dramatic fits of almost epileptic and fainting attacks into God’s Hands. Priest who “gave up” and “denied” so much that it becomes dangerous to self and others.

Everything about the flesh is…bad. Don’t do this. Don’t do that. Certainly don’t do that!!! 

The “best of us” are so focused on God, there is no room for such tangible things as…a body.  It is almost as if…the more unwell the body, the more physically painful the trials, the more spiritual the person. 

It’s somehow ingrained that flesh was something to be subdued and controlled.  Or ignored. That the human body was “less than”.  That it was unimportant.  Or…less important and that caring for it was almost “selfish”.   Bodily health and wellness was not really part of the religions. 

The repercussions of this permeates our culture.  Everyone else and everything else comes before the health of our own human body.  PAUSE.  We don’t rest.  We don’t tend.  Self care is selfish. 

I can’t tell you the number of times I have heard that “I will always put my child’s oxygen mask on first” in my life.  To put it simply, if you choose that path…both you and your child will need help in about ten seconds. Hopefully the passenger next to you has the presence of mind to tend to your child and you.  

This is how we live our daily lives.  We put other people and our other jobs and other things first. At the same time, we think we’re the most selfish of people as a society.  This doesn’t “fit”.  One of these things is not like the other.  

It’s very confusing.  Human beings are very confusing. Human society is very confusing.  

Here’s a Question (let’s go on a quest).  If we tend to everyone else first AND our work is to tend to everyone else and not ourselves, who is being tended to?  Somebody needs to be tended to.  Who are these “other” people who deserve to be tended to.  Who’s is it if it’s not us?  

Maybe we need to soften into “both”. It’s not one thing or the other.  Maybe it’s not which of these things is not like the other, which always begs the question: if they are different, which is better and which is worse?  The chicken or the egg?  Unanswerable questions. I love those. The unknowable.  

Maybe it’s not the body or the spirit.  Maybe it’s both.  Both are just as precious and important and in need of tending and love. In the yoga world, there’s a root theory that you cannot tend as well to spirit and soul when you body is in pain.  The pain is too distracting from also tending to spirit and Grace.  Hence, tend to the body so that we can tend to spirit and soul.  Tend to both.  

It seems the Corinthians is asking of us the same thing.  It is reminding us this life is precious and important and the greatest of gifts.  What do we do with a gift?  Especially the most precious of gifts?  We love them and tend to them and care for them.  

What if we cared for our bodies for Grace?  What if we always put our oxygen masks on first, so that we are always ready, healthy, and strong enough to tend to others?  

What if we cared for ourselves as a form of devotion to God or Jesus or the Universal (or the whatever God means to you)?  

Here in Corinthians, body matters because it houses spirit.  For some, it IS spirit.  For some, each of our bodies houses the Christ.  Our body is the temple. We don’t need to argue about which it is or if if’s something else entirely.  Either way, tending to ourselves is just as important as tending to others.  It IS both. It always has been…not this side or that side, but both. Connection and belonging together. True tenderness. 

We might wonder if we would treat Jesus the way we treat ourselves?  Just pause to ponder that a moment.  Would we treat Jesus the way we treat ourselves?  

We often get caught up in the it will be better when thought patterns.  In life, it’ll be better when we’re on vacation and can rest.  It’ll be better when we have more money. It’ll be better when we retire.  We can also get caught up in: it will be better in the afterlife…when we ascend to Heaven and take God’s hand (whatever that means to you). 

What if it’s both?  Both body and soul and also both here/now and whatever comes After.  

What if we honor our body as we would Grace/God/Spirit/Christ?  What if we behaved differently.  Not “good” to get the the “better when”, but because we are already here and this moment deserves the best of us.  We are gifted with this incredible body in this incredible moment in time.  Grace wanted us, yes us, here for a reason.  

What if we didn’t treat ourselves as something…less than or secondhand, but as the hands of God or as workers of grace in this world.  Important. Needed.  

We are called as followers.  We are called toward spirit, but we are also called to have reverence for this temple we call a body.  We are called to reverence for the temple we call a body of others.  We re called to have a reverence for Grace.  What if the damage we do to ourselves is damage to Grace?  

Imagine this, if you will, as you ponder and agree and disagree with my pondering:  Perhaps even close your eyes to let in imagination (imaginative contemplation).  

Imagine our body as a temple for Holy Spirit.  How would we treat it differently?  

Imagine treating ourselves as we would Jesus…

Imagine washing our feet as if we’re Grace.  Imagine wiping our own tears as if we’re Grace.  Imagine sitting with our thoughts and feelings as if we’re Grace.  Imagine asking ourselves big questions as if we’re Grace.  Imagine treating ourselves as we would treat Jesus.  

What if the nearness of God is as close as our own hearts?  What if we are the temple of the Holy Spirit that calls us toward a Goodness and Work in this world?  What if we let ourselves be called and tend to all of it?  What if we listened and tended to everything, including ourselves? 

Imagine that world.  PAUSE.  If we tended ourselves that way, imagine how we’d treat others.  Imagine how others would treat us.  Imagine how that small, tiny shift would ripple forth into the world….

Imagine a devotion big enough to include ourselves! 

Just Imagine…