This article also appeared over at Patheos (click on the link and to the right of my piece you can see a whole list of articles for their discussion this week on religion & the body):
Here I am.
This is the body-like-no-other that my life has shaped.
I live here.
This is my soul’s address.
-Barbara Brown Taylor, An [...]
Posted in Embodiment | 9 Comments »
Do you have a body? Don’t sit on the porch!
Go out and walk in the rain!
If you are in love,
then why are you asleep?
Wake up, wake up!
You have slept millions of years
Why not wake up this morning
-Kabir
“In a world where faith is often construed as a way of thinking, bodily practices remind the willing that [...]
Posted in Abbey Bookshelf, Embodiment | 4 Comments »
I want to unfold. I do not want to remain folded up anywhere,
because wherever I am still folded, I am untrue.
-Rainer Maria Rilke
I am currently participating in a two-week yoga intensive at a studio near my house. Monday through Friday for two weeks I arrive for my 8:30 class to commit to another day of my [...]
Posted in Embodiment, Spirituality | 19 Comments »
One of the most amazing places we visited during our summer journeying was the bone chapel in Hallstatt, Austria. The link to the article provides some more information, but essentially in this beautiful little village tucked between mountain and lake, bones from the cemetery used to be removed to make room for the newly dead. [...]
Posted in Embodiment, Photos, Pilgrimage | 9 Comments »
Humpbacks
There is, all around us,
this country
of original fire.
You know what I mean.
The sky, after all, stops at nothing so something
has to be holding
our bodies
in its rich and timeless stables or else
we would fly away.
Off Stellwagan
off the Cape,
the humbacks rise. Carrying their tonnage
of barnacles and joy
they leap through the water, they nuzzle back under it
like children
at [...]
Posted in Embodiment, Photos, Poetry, Season by the Sea | 7 Comments »
I spent most of the weekend curled up in bed nursing my migraines. They began Friday morning when we had our Monthly Gathering, a wonderful morning of walking the labyrinth together except that I was in a bit of a haze from pain killers. That afternoon I was able to get my infusion two weeks [...]
Posted in Embodiment, Photos | 10 Comments »
I have been reading a wonderful article from The Way journal by Andrew Linzey who is a theologian and writer on animal theology. I was delighted to discover that he has in fact published several books on the subject.
Linzey writes: “People who keep animals have often made an elementary but profound discovery: animals are not machines [...]
Posted in Embodiment, Monastic Spirituality, Nature | 19 Comments »
I am very touched by the response to my post yesterday both in comments and in email. I knew opening up this vulnerable place would begin to shift things in me again, move me again to that place where honoring my body is a gift rather than a burden. I am always struggling in some [...]
Posted in Embodiment | 8 Comments »
We had our fifth Awakening the Creative Spirit session on Friday and Saturday. The focus this time was on movement led primarily by my teaching partner Betsey. I was eager to see our group of wonderful women participating as always, but also wondered how I would do during this session since my body hasn’t been [...]
Posted in Embodiment | 10 Comments »
I am fashioned as a galaxy,
Not as a solid substance but a mesh
Of atoms in their far complexity
Forming the pattern of my bone and flesh.
Small solar systems are my eyes,
Muscle and sinew are composed of air.
Like comets flashing through the evening skies
My blood runs, ordered, arrogant, and fair.
Ten lifetimes distant is the nearest star,
And yet [...]
Posted in Embodiment | 5 Comments »
