Word reached the Jews that the Pope was going to kick them out of Rome. The head rabbi sought audience with the Holy See to try to avert this fate.
When the rabbi arrived, there was a problem. The Pope spoke only Italian and Latin. The rabbi spoke only Yiddish and Hebrew. They sat across a long table staring at each other in silence.
The Pope rose and made the sign of the cross, touching his head, heart and shoulders. The Rabbi shook his head, raised one finger and then put it down.
Next, the Pope waved his finger around his head. The Rabbi pointed to the ground where he sat.
The Pope brought out communal bread and a chalice of wine.
The Rabbi pulled out an apple.
With that, the Pope stood up and declared “The Jews can stay!”
Later the cardinals met with the Pope and asked him what had happened. The Pope said, ‘First I made the sign of the cross, suggesting the trinity, Father, Son and Holy Ghost. He responded by holding up a single finger to remind me there is still only one God common to us both.” Then, I waved my finger around my head to show him that God was everywhere. He responded by pointing down to remind God is not present in Hell. ‘Finally, I pulled out the wine and wafer to show that God absolves us of all our sins. He pulled out an apple to remind me of the original sin.’ ‘He bested me at every move and I could not continue!’
Meanwhile, the Jewish community gathered to ask the Rabbi what had happened. ‘I don’t know!’ the Rabbi said. ‘First, he told me that all of us from the north, south, east and west, we all needed to go. I told him that we were staying right here. ‘
He repeated that he wanted all of us gone. I said we would stay put.
And then what?’ asked a woman. He took out his lunch. He offered some to me. I let him know I had my own.
With that he stood and declared “The Jews can stay.”
Today’s theme is Body Wisdom, somatic spirituality. When I’ve spoken on this subject previously my message has been simple. The main of Christianity has asserted the doctrine of original sin. It seems that to the church the body represents sin. Nature is something to be conquered. Historically, the Unitarian and Universalist traditions affirmed more positive views of God, human beings and all of nature.
Thomas Starr King, the first person to be ordained in both Unitarian and Universalist Church joked that “The Universalist… believes that God is too good to damn us forever; and you Unitarians believe that you are too good to be damned.” I have used Mathew Fox’s term “Original Blessing” to describe UU attitude re life and nature.
For me the essence of religious liberalism is a commitment not to throw the baby out with bathwater. Perhaps it’s too simplistic to say that human nature is sinful or to say that it is good. Few matters are all or nothing. We don’t have to believe in the literal truth of a doctrine or story to appreciate it as an attempt to explain or express something important.
UU tradition comes down squarely on the side that life and creation are a blessing. We have profound respect for nature. We reject the notion that bodies are inherently sinful. We don’t suggest that its God’s will for humans to have dominion over Earth. Our views are more like that of Indigenous cultures. We cherish the words of Chief Seattle: “Man does not weave this web of life. He is merely a strand of it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.” Is it greed or hubris that leads us to grab what we want while underestimating the potential for unseen consequences when disturbing the natural order? On the other hand, who doesn’t appreciate contributions from medicine, science and technology that came as a result of manipulating and extracting from nature?!
Respect and reverence for nature runs through our liturgies, our curricula, and our prophetic ministry. We see the sacred, the holy, the eternal and the infinite in every organism, every interaction, in the chemistry, anatomy and physiology of Earth and the great cosmos.
We are growing awareness of the interconnectedness of the web. We have seen how misinformation leads to great harm. Our UU history has been shaped by our questioning the beliefs that divide us. We’ve come to study how oppression leads people to wage war on each other, on ourselves, our bodies, nature in and around us. Oppressive misinformation “teaches” us to be ashamed of natural functions and processes of our bodies, to be ashamed of our bodies and ourselves. We’ve learned to ignore our emotions, ignore the life force in us that indicates fulfillment or frustration of needs.
UU religion grew out of Protestant Tradition and the European Enlightenment, and we proudly celebrate the upward trends contained in these. Our holding liberation as a religious value grows from these. We celebrate the ascendancy of science and reason. We cherish our UU history of striving to overcome superstition and idolatries of the mind. We do this and we acknowledge that there are oppressive currents flowing from our history.
Western culture has held thoughts and spirit as superior to bodies and emotion. It enshrined reason and used it to justify and rationalize violence and brutality. Societies were shaped by domination and a drive to conquer nature. Domination and violence have been part of the pedagogy that shaped us.
Having learned to look down on physicality and emotion, UU tradition grew itself a disembodied intellectualism. It’s been reflective of a larger picture of Western disconnection from nature and our bodies. The denigration of nature, bodies and emotions enabled systems of oppression to flourish. As we became cut off from emotions, we learned to deny our suffering. We then learned to become callous to the suffering we inflicted on others. Each of us has been wounded by systems of cultural violence. It’s written into us physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.
Fortunately, the life force is powerful and persistent. It causes us to long for healing. Longing for liberation and faith in human progress was written into our nation’s constitution and into our UU religious tradition.
In more recent times, Western culture has grown in appreciation of wholistic healing and whole bodied spirituality. Our paradigms have been slowly shifting from a Newtonian mechanistic worldview into a worldview influenced by Einstein, Heisenburg, and quantum physics. Interdisciplinary scientists have demonstrated that life exists only as communities of communities. Science has pushed us to learn interdependence. And we find this wisdom written into world religions. The Dalai Lama uses a term Interdependent Co-arising to explain existence.
Yes I know I’ve spewed complicated cerebral philosophical concepts in a sermon on Body Wisdom. Hang with me. My hope is that we will arrive to meet with ourselves, consciousness and body united.
Western culture has been materialistic. By this, I don’t just mean that we are characterized by lust for luxury yachts. I mean that we assumed matter was the basis of all we saw, heard, felt. We imagined our world as a mechanism like a big clock. Some suggested that God made the clock and set it in motion. We assumed that if we disassembled the clock and identified each of its parts, we would better understand the mechanism and G*d.
Today we are increasingly understanding that nothing exists separate from anything else. In addition to continued study of matter, we now study the relationships and the processes and the exchanges that occur between organs and body systems, between communities and between natural systems.
We have found that the eternal, the infinite is present anywhere we look. A theist might express this by saying that God is everywhere. A Buddhist might express this by talking about the emptiness or empty space from which everything arises. We UUs sing it in Jim Scott’s song “The Oneness of Everything.”
However we understand the world, the question is do we hold all of life as sacred? Or do we choose to see it as disposable material? Perhaps God or life cannot be grasped or understood but can be experienced! If G*d, the ultimate, the Holy is everywhere, then she (I’m calling the divine she) she can exercises her superpowers in and through our bodies. It’s like the ancient Sanskrit poem. Some of you may know it.
Look to this day for it is life, the very life of life. In its brief course lie all the realities and truths of existence: the joy of growth the splendor of action the glory of power. For yesterday is but a memory
And tomorrow is only a vision.
But today well lived
makes every yesterday a memory of happiness
and every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore, to this day.
We might add “we look to this body.”
A friend of mine is in Taiwan this week. She wrote me “if it were my pulpit, I would be talking about dancing, playing with children and pets and being in nature as “Somatic Spirituality” and the ways I have learned to truly listen to the wisdom of my body.
This afternoon, she continued “I will take my grandson swimming for the last time this year. He LOVES swimming and I love watching the way he interacts with the water.
Tomorrow, I will take him to a huge playground he has never seen before while his moms attend an event in Taipei.
Sunday I will spend the day trying to extract as many hugs, cuddles, giggles and kisses as possible to shore me up over the coming months!
Monday night I will be home in my own bed.”
Somatic Spirituality is listening to the wisdom of our bodies. It’s also listening to Gaia, not ignoring the floods, the fires, the droughts, the hurricanes, and mass extinctions. It’s listening to cries, shouts and screams that arise in the larger bodies, towns, states, nations. It’s choosing not to ignore the plague of gun violence in our land.
It’s caring about the yearnings of our hearts, our dreams and visions. It’s noticing which songs or what art extricates us from our mental nightmares and enables us to again walk in blessing. It’s restorative practices like massage, and it’s fulfilling labor. It’s learning to hold ourselves compassionately when we are in pain or suffering. It’s getting rest and sleep. It’s endorphins from exercise. It’s savoring tasty foods, meals and relationships that nourish our bodies and our souls.
Body wisdom helps us to stop eating or drinking what doesn’t agree with us. Somatic spirituality leads us to stop trying to be like others and start reveling in the one-of-a-kind extraordinary spectacle of nature that is us. It’s respecting nature’s enormous power and realizing we are connected with it. When we are aligned, we can become a force of nature.
Somatic spirituality leads us toward wholistic healing, to care about causes not just symptoms. To learn which conditions lead to health and which to sickness. We begin to gain body wisdom when we realize that there are symphonies and novels written inside us. We learn to embrace our joy and our grief. When we feel worried and when we feel relieved, we can become aware of these as sensations in precise locations in our body. When we experience external events, we can pay attention to our internal reactions. We can observe when what’s expressed outside resonates with what’s inside us.
Somatic spirituality is becoming aware of shifts in our bodies when we watch the sunrise or sunset, when we feel the first cool breeze of September. It’s noticing when a song or a movie activates memory of being bathed in someone’s love, wherever that love was known. It’s awareness of what happens in our bodies when we feel or remember love to or from a grandparent, a parent, a sister, a brother, a friend or a lover. Noticing what inspires us to love is spiritual awakening. Body wisdom supports conscious creation of love that reduces stress hormones in our bodies. It produces neurochemistry that supports enjoyment and wellbeing.
Somatic spirituality is noticing what brings us joy and making space to bring that to life. It’s also noticing what brings tears. Welcoming the flow of life force that comes as tears. It’s learning how to allow tears to reconnect us to what our hearts are longing for.
Through appreciation and awareness of bodies, we can tap into power greater than us, practice our connection, and remember that we are a strand in the great and beautiful web of existence. Blessed be! Make it so!
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