Thoughts on being a body

So this is a big topic for me, HUGE really, and I'm not going to fully delve into tonight. But I've started re-reading a book I hold dear, Reclaiming the Body in Christian Spirituality by Thomas Ryan. Essential it talks about the role of the body in Christian spiritual life and what it means to be an embodied being. When I first read this book it was a total paradigm shift and also a total breath of fresh air. I want to share a passage from the introduction, which is actually a quote from another book, Honouring the Body by Stephanie Paulsell:

What is this body we wish to honor? There seem to be as many descriptions of the body as there are people to describe it. The body is a friend or a traitor. A gift or a task. Something precious knit together by God's own hands or the prison house of the soul, which, according to Plato, is trapped in the body like an oyster in a shell. Most descriptions of the body tend to fall into one or two camps: some suggest that the essence of who we are is merely encased, temporarily, in a body. In other words, a body is something we have. Others suggest that what is essential about human being cannot be separated from bodies. In other words, we are our bodies in a very fundamental way......Such is the mystery of the body. Sometimes we know that we are our bodies, that our capacity for life and death makes us who we are. At other times we feel that we simply inhabit a vessel that is inadequate to contain all that we are.

So what is it? Am I a body? Or trapped in a body? In either case, what does it mean if I ignore my body's needs, abuse it, starve it, try to whip it into shape? What am I really doing? Or what am I attempting to control?

I love this book too because it really delves into the idea that GOD MADE US TO BE EMBODIED. In fact, the thing that distinguishes Christianity from other religions is the idea that God became EMBODIED and came down to earth and dwelt among us. Our entire faith is built upon the bodily life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Whoa. So what does that tell me about the importance of bodies to God? And more specifically, what does it imply for the way I should be treating and caring for MY body?

Right now I mainly just have a lot of questions, and not a lot of answers. But I'm asking new things. And I'm certainly re-examining the way that I think about, live in, and treat MY body.

Anti-cookie monster

OMG I FORGOT ABOUT A COOKIE.

Sometimes, it is really the small (tiny) things that make me laugh at myself and also show me that, YES, I am making progress. Case in point: yesterday I bought a cookie (my FAVORITE, the ginger cookies from thischickbakes.com. Nom. I <3.) with my morning latte and stuck it in my purse for later. And then I totally forgot about it. I was cleaning our my purse last night to get ready for the week and found it, and was shocked!

To you normal peeps out there, this might sound insane. Or inane. I don't know which. I haven't had "normal" thoughts about food in about 15 years. But I NEVER forget about a cookie. In fact, I usually have a pretty steady inventory in my head of exactly what food I have in my house, and which items are binge-able, etc... So to have a day where I was so focused and involved in other things that I plain out FORGOT the cookie was sitting there, in my purse, awaiting my attention, is a victory.

Another victory: I just ate half the cookie (hey, it's BIG cookie). It was delicious. I'm putting the rest away for tomorrow, and I'm going to bed. Sweets and sleep. Mmmm... :)

A day for surrender...

I wake up this morning at 6:30 am STARVING, with a killer headache, no doubt related to dehyradation, the pre-bed binge and purge, and lack of enough food that I did NOT puke up yesterday. Realize I am out of Advil. Scrounge around in a drawer until I find an ibuprofen that managed to make it home from the hospital in my scrub pockets one day. THANK GOD. 30 minutes later I still feel like crap, so I stumble back downstairs, ignoring the remnants of last night's binge (empty food containers and dirty dishes on the coffee table, take out bags on the floor) and into the kitchen to make something to eat. Oatmeal. While it's cooking, I lay back down in bed for my morning meditation:

Breathe in..... You are enough.
And out.... And I surrender.

This has not been a week of surrender. This has been a week of "But I want it." And "I want it" is not so conducive to recovery. But today, as I survey my living room, my yesterday, my last week, my life, I say: You are enough. And I surrender. I chew my oatmeal slowly, methodically, a chewing mediation. I meet a friend, walk to church. A walking mediation. Smell the Christmas trees now for sale. An olfactory meditation. Celebrate the first Sunday of Advent, sing, pray, take notes on the sermon. The sermon focuses on discipline, the partner to surrender in recovery. This week has not been about discipline either. The pastor goes on to talk about the liberation that comes when we surrender control to the perfect law of God. Hmm. Surrendering control--another thing this week has NOT been about. But I listen. And I try to gasp onto the truth in his words: the truth of perfect freedom, born of discipline and surrender.

I walk home. It is a perfect Manhattan fall day: cloudless, concentrated blue sky, bright sunshine, crisp air. Wander into Barnes and Noble. Take my time at Fairway, filling my cart with the bright colors of fresh fruits and vegetables, nourishment. Come home and make myself brunch, tofu scramble filled with my favorite vegetables. Call a friend and nourish my soul as well, letting her voice and laughter lift my spirits.

Today is a new day. You are enough. And I surrender.