Give Dignity to Your Body
permission to pause on church services + include physicality in seeking peace
“Learn to appreciate and give dignity to your body, not abusing it, as is so common among those who know nothing of God.” (1 Thessalonians 4:4, MSG)
Over the weekend I read a sentence that stunned me. While describing the life and death of the poet Rumi, Rainer Maria Rilke said, “With Rumi the scale is shifted, for this is the mystery of the deeply kneeling man.”1
The mystery of the deeply kneeling human. The posture Rilke described wasn’t about penitence or some false-humility-pride, but of knees that bend before beauty and a self that surrenders to being brought low. “In following the peculiar weight and strength in his knees,” Rilke continues, “he belongs to the world in which height is depth.”
The more I revere my body and remember she belongs to me and is me, the more I belong to the world where depth becomes height and where lows birth love.
Yesterday, instead of going to church, I worshiped by walking in an aspen grove alongside a dear friend and my husband.2 To be totally honest, I've barely attended church services in months. The reasons are many and more complex than I’m ready to describe right now.3 All of the reasons, however, come down to appreciating and giving dignity to my body.
To put it another way: I am worshiping Christ who lives within me by honoring my body as worthy of radical care.
What if we who are brought low and have to live slow because of the effects of trauma and illness are being repositioned into a reverence that can heal?
This fall has brought me to my knees. In August I started receiving IVIG treatments every three weeks for a host of diseases and conditions (you can read more about that in this edition of Embodied), and the transition hasn’t been smooth. Between IVIG recovery and recovery from my monthly normal biologic and weekly chemotherapy medications, I’ve been spending about two weeks per month in bed. I am humbled by the fragility of my body and her fierceness. With so little time to live and love outside of bed, I am honoring the weight of what my body is enduring by choosing what weight of stress I will not place on the scales of this season.
Right now, Ryan and I are taking classes together for a certificate in Integrative Somatic Trauma Therapy, and this week’s teacher was the wonder who is Deb Dana.4 She said something I knew but needed to hear again:
“Our physiological state on any given day can influence our molecular makeup for weeks and months into the future… So we say this two hours that we're spending together—how our nervous systems experience it can be taken beyond these two hours into the rest of the day, into tomorrow, into the next day. There's a great shaping that goes on moment to moment in our nervous systems.
And I think of that in my work with clients. I think of the responsibility to have the hour we are spending together, be one that they have a neuroception of safety, because it's more than the hour we're spending together, right?”5
The time we spend with others and the quality of safety (or lack thereof) we sense when with them affects our bodies on a molecular level for days and even weeks and months afterward.
How you spend today and whom you spend today with will affect the story you experience and believe about tomorrow and this whole week.
Appreciating and giving dignity to your body includes appreciating the way your nervous system needs safety, responds to its lack, and recovers when surrounded by glimmers of goodness.
The presence of safety and the presence of stressors are both like flat rocks flung across the surface of the lake of our lives. Both ripple farther than they are thrown.
One experience of tenderheartedness, peace, wonder, reciprocity, and respect can ripple palpable joy and belonging into your coming days and weeks. And one experience of pride, judgement, and power differentials being overlooked can crease our coming days with confusion and stress. It’s a physiological reality.
For me, church has recently brought too many cues of danger and not enough cues of safety, and I’ve found my body is again experiencing being there as being threatened in a way that ripples into the hours and days afterward.
Too often, we put up with distress—or at least dismiss it—out of a sense of duty. And underneath duty is often a fear of disconnection. Will we be judged for doing life and faith differently? Will others and even God be displeased and disappointed in us if we don’t do _____ or ______?
Too many of us have been taught that holiness doesn’t include our happiness. Too many of us have swallowed a fictional story where God is supposed to be good but somehow not safe. Too few of us have been given permission to practice a faith that positions God’s presence and power inside our physicality and between our bodies, not in spite of them.
It is my ambition to lead what Paul described as a quiet and peaceful life. (1 Thessalonians 4:11) At my core, what I most desire is not a big stage or a massive wage but a spacious place where I can delight in the wonder of God’s grace. And I long for that for everyone.
Peace is a Person who still breathes in a body—Jesus Christ—and your peace still comes not despite your body’s needs but through them.
Right now, I am revering and respecting my body for so courageously bearing a heavy burden and bigger needs. My window of tolerance for stress is smaller in this season. My margins for showing up for my clients and showing up for myself and my spouse doing normal and indispensable things like eating and walking and cleaning and sleeping have in some ways shrunk. There are many stones I have to watch sink under the surface of this season. There are storms of symptoms I have to wait out. And I have agency and self-control and stewardship. I am taking extra care about which rocks I let ripple over the lake of my life.
As far as it concerns me, I will let peace wave over the waters of my days. I will let wonder reach across the surface of this season. I will allow those who have proven themselves as kind and compassionate and consistent to rest the weight of their words on this water. I will let joy and belonging ripple farther than stress, uncertainty, and fear. I will witness the weariness of adapting to another hard season, and I will bless my body for the miracle of her endurance. I will stand at the edge of the lake of my life and fling smooth stones of hope while the seasons change and the light slides, and I will kneel as I watch as the scales shift to weigh all of human life as holy.
Rilke said that with Rumi the scales were shifted in the mystery of being a deeply kneeling man. I say that with you and with me the scales are shifting in the mystery of kneeling before the dirt and distress in our life as places worthy of compassionate presence.
The scales of our spirituality can shift to include our whole lives as holy and every person as deserving of love as we bow before the brokenness in our own bodies as worthy of our grief, compassion, and care.
What is bending you? What is breaking you? What is bowing you down in humility at all you cannot bear to hold any more?
That, my friend, is the holy ground where height becomes depth and loss births love.
The contrasts in your life—the places you might feel crushed and confused where you used to feel comfort and consolation—are an invitation into reverence, curiosity, and compassion. Yesterday I chose to give myself the presence of beauty and being in the body of Christ with a friend who is deeply safe for me, to ripple solace and strength into this week. I was reminded how Autumn in Colorado bears a unique majesty because of its brevity and contrast. We don't have many deciduous trees here, and the short weeks when our aspens surrender to the season’s shifting scales are simply glorious.
The glory of fall here is not in a wild array of colors but in the contrast between green conifers standing tall near aspen gold. We treasure the transformation because the window is smaller. We marvel at the majesty more because we must reposition our plans around witnessing it. Yesterday, my joy was fuller because I was seeing from the bowed-down eyes in my soul that know because bed is a place I often live, beauty is a gift to savor.
This too is your life. These contrasts color the seasons of you. I don’t have tidy takeaways for you, like what you should do about church or what you should say to people who are uncomfortable with the shifting scales of spirituality in your own life. I respect you too much to pretend to know what you most need in your particular season and your unique story and skin. But I will leave you with this—a blessing and a question:
Even if you don’t step foot inside a church building soon or again, may you bow before the brokenness in the building of your body. May you sense something of the presence of the broken body of Jesus even in the breathlessness and burden you bear. May you witness your own weariness as worthy of your grief, compassion, and care.
Even though you cannot remove all stress from your life, I pray you will practice the peace of giving dignity to your body for the stress you are already bearing and unburdening. I pray you will dare to reclaim your rightful rule as a beloved child and heir of Divine Love to decide what rocks are allowed to ripple over the surface of the lake of your life this week.
Now, you tell us (feel free to comment below + to engage with each other):
What is shifting in your spirituality this season?
Big or small; comfortable to put into words or slightly scary to say. It's all welcome here.6
With wonder and gratitude that I get to ponder all of this with you,
KJ
Did this resonate? Then I think you’ll love reading my latest book, The Lord Is My Courage.
Have you already read it? I’d love to hear what you loved about it in a review.
PS I hope you’ll join me tomorrow with my dear friend Krispin Mayfield, a fellow therapist and the author of the excellent book Attached to God, for an IG Live conversation about the courage of healing from religious trauma. 6pm Mountain/8pm Eastern: @kjramseywrites.
Rainer Maria Rilke, quoted by Coleman Barks in the introduction to Rumi: The Book of Love (New York: HarperOne, 2003), xxiv.
Yes, my younger self would have mocked me for even saying this, as though only selfish people spend Sundays in the pews of mountain peaks rather than actual pews. There was so much I didn’t understand.
I explore some of my need to pausing from attending church services in The Lord Is My Courage, and I hope it’s a good starting place for you to explore the edges of how trauma can tank our sense of safety inside the institutional church.
If that name sounds familiar to you, it might be because I cite her like a total fan-girl in The Lord Is My Courage. Deb Dana’s translation of polyvagal theory into accessible language has been transformative for me personally and as a therapist to guide us into whole, grounded, and good presence.
If some of what Deb said about safety and neuroception doesn’t make sense/sound familiar, I recommend reading chapter 3 of The Lord Is My Courage.
As always, the comments section is a zero-judgment space where we commit to giving dignity to each other’s bodily experience, even if we don’t fully understand each other’s needs and perspectives.
I have had to rebuild a new version of God since the death of my wife exposed the old version as insufficient for me at my worst. It has been simultaneously excruciating and exhilarating. As I try to nestle into the mystery I realize my wrestling is far from over, but it feels like it's getting me closer to the God that Jesus knows. Your transparency is a rare and beautiful gift. It resonates with me as I chose to creatively write my way through my grief journey trying to capture every wretched mood and phase. My heart aches with what you must endure, but you have found purpose in your pain. I respect, admire, and can relate to that.
“To be totally honest, I've barely attended church services in months. The reasons are many and more complex than I’m ready to describe right now.” I feel this in my soul… right down to the footnote about how your younger self would scoff or see these statements as an excuse.