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MAY

Week 2. Spiritual Practice

ACCESSING HEALTH AND FULLNESSS OF LIFE

Material and Tradition Elements for this Block. Essay Honoring the Body by Stephanie Paulsell from Practicing Our Faith, edited by Dorothy Bass, Jossey-Bass, 1998. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a fathers only son, full of grace and truth. John 1:14 And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching. Hebrews 10:25 Objectives. To help volunteers understand the ways in which their own bodies are a gift from God and that by taking proper care of our bodies we are offering worship to God. To remind volunteers once again of the importance of community and encourage them to reflect on how their community has been a means of grace in their spiritual growth.

Background for Facilitator One of the central claims of the Christian faith is that in Jesus of Nazareth, God took flesh and became human, walking and living on the earth in the same general way that we do today. Christian tradition, of course, has offered mixed results when it comes to connecting the dots between faith in God and respect, appreciation and proper care for human bodies. Despite the churchs struggles in this area, Christians affirm without hesitation the words of the Apostle Paul, that the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, and that proper worship of God is connected to proper reverence of human bodies. If history is any indication, some of the most rewarding and challenging experiences for your volunteers will take place when they interact with other human bodies, both those in their community and those in the broader community they are serving. Some volunteers may have their own concerns about their bodies that they bring to this discussion, but almost all of them will have some experience of blessing or tension as it relates to being in community with different people with different mindsets and different life experiences. This session will hopefully be one place where they will feel free to discuss some of these issues, if they havent already before. Finally, one hope of the volunteer year is that your volunteers have helped one another grow in their faith and their love of God. This is one of the chief purposes of the church and one of the great rewards of participating in a volunteer year. During this session, we hope that you will be able to engage the volunteers in discussions of how they have helped one another and consider ways they might be able to do that going forward beyond the volunteer year.

For this session, please plan to spend 50-65 minutes together. Materials You Will Need. Journals Pens or pencils Excerpt of Essay Honoring the Body by Stephanie Paulsell from Practicing Our Faith, edited by Dorothy Bass (see below).

Pillar Signature: Journaling. 5-10 min. Each Spiritual Practice block will include a time for journaling. Some of these practices lend themselves naturally to journaling, and others are more active or focused on other sorts of activities. For this weeks spiritual practice block, invite volunteers to journal about the ways in which they have tried to care for their physical bodies during their volunteer year. You might also invite them to reflect about how time spent in community has made them more aware of other bodies around them. Presentation of the Material. 15 min. Allow the volunteers time to read an excerpt from Stephanie Paulsells essay Honoring the Body from Practicing Our Faith, edited by Dorothy Bass, pages 14, 16-18, 25-27. The Christian practice of honoring the body is born of the confidence that our bodies are made in the image of Gods own goodness. Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, Paul wrote to the church at Corinth (I Corinthians 6:19). As the place where the divine presence dwells, our bodies are worthy of care and blessing and ought never to be degraded or exploited. It is through our bodies that we participate in Gods activity in the worldAnd it is through our daily bodily acts bathing, dressing, touching that we might live more fully into the sacredness of our bodies and the bodies of others. This is not to say that Christianitys history in regard to the body has been untroubled. Unfortunately, that history can pose serious problems for people who turn to Christian faith for guidance in this practice. From its origins, there have always been Christians who have found the human body scandalous and repugnant. Some early Christians believed that Jesus own body must have been an illusion, since a mortal human body surely could not bear within it something as precious as divinity. Such perplexity about the body continued as Christianity developed. Early Christians looked for clues about humanitys relationship to God in the bodys most vulnerable moments: the moment of sexual desire and the moment of death. Some believed that death revealed our separation from God most fully, and that sexuality represented Gods sympathy for our mortality because it offered a remedy, through procreation, for death. Others thought that sexuality itself was the clearest sign of our distance from God, because sexual desire can assert itself insistently even when the individual wills otherwise. The Christian practice of honoring the body thus took shape within the very human concern over how the basic realities of death and sexual desire can rob us of our freedom. At its best, the early Christians difficult friendship with human embodiment aimed to restore human freedom in the face of these powerful forces.

With their commitment to freedom came a profound sense of responsibility for the protection and nourishment of other bodies. Bodily vulnerability is something we all share rich and poor, male and female, slave and free. Many early Christians preached that knowledge of such shared vulnerability must lead us to solidarity with every other human body, especially the bodies of the poor. These Christians knew that what is suffered by one can be suffered by all, and that every body is a fragile temple of Gods Spirit and worthy of care For Christians, communal worship provides opportunities to honor the body through rituals that deepen our experience of the bodys sacredness in everyday life. The Lords Supper reminds us that every time we gather with others to nourish our bodies, we have an opportunity to draw closer to one another and to God. Exchanging signs of peace with our bodies reminds us that we must touch others only in peace and love. Adorning ourselves for worship, kneeling in prayer, drawing our breath in song all remind us that we come to God as embodied people. The movement of the liturgical year also honors the body as central to our search for God. The liturgical calendar is a record of embodiment, as it takes shape around the life of Jesus and the community he called into being. Fasting during Lent, foot washing on Maundy Thursday, celebrating the Easter Vigil at midnight unite us with Christians of every age who have sought to enter bodily into the narrative of Jesus life and death The Christian practice of honoring the body requires that we view the world through the lens of Jesus wounded but resurrected body. His broken body brings into focus the bodies of the sick and the wounded and the exploited. His resurrection shows us the beauty God intends for all bodies. As we love and suffer, as we seek God and each other, with our bodies, we remember that every body is blessed by God, deserving of protection and care. Gut Response. 2-5 min. Ask the group: How do you experience God and the world through your body? How have we as a community cared for or neglected our bodies or the bodies of those around us? Invite the volunteers to consider how they might help one another become more whole during their time together. Engagement of the Material: Group Activity. 20 min. Depending on the size of your group, you might invite them to divide into groups and reflect for about five minutes each on two topics. First, invite them to share with one another observations they have made this year about how they have used their bodies to worship God. Second, invite the group to reflect on how they have been encouraged to be more faithful to God by other people this year, particularly by those they live with. After their ten minutes are up, invite them to share with the group. Leave time for open-ended discussion, because most likely the sharing will produce some synthesis and insight into what your community has experienced this year. The Tradition. 2-5 min. The Christian story is centered on one body, the body of Jesus, who transforms the bodies of the whole world. Consequently, for people of faith, care for our bodies and the bodies of others is part and parcel of what it means to be faithful to the God who has given us our bodies. It is interesting to note, that in the Christian tradition it is the Apostle Paul who has written some of the most influential words on the body. In I Corinthians, Paul writes that not only is the body a vessel for the Holy Spirit, a temple

of the divine presence, but also that through Christ, all of us with our different bodies and minds and backgrounds, are brought into one body the body of Christ. Hopefully by this point in the year your volunteers have experienced a supportive community that has helped them grow closer to God and to the people around them. Christian faith is not a solo endeavor and the goal of the Christian life is to grow in the love and knowledge of God and to become as much like Christ as possible. The church word for this is sanctification, the idea that with the help of the Holy Spirit, over time we can become increasingly more faithful in a life devoted to God. All of the spiritual practices that the volunteers have been introduced to this year are designed to help them grow closer to God and to live God-shaped lives. Synthesis. 5-10 min. At this point your volunteers have discussed Christian practices relating to their individual bodies and to the corporate Christian body. Invite your group to consider the bodies they have experienced serving in their communities. How might a proper Christian understanding of revering the body make a difference, particularly in communities that serve and work with the poor and marginalized? Is body image an issue of justice? Prayer. Gracious God, We give you thanks for the body that you have given us and for the bodies that you have put into our care. We pray that you might teach us again how to worship you through properly caring for and appreciating the bodies that you have given us. Remind us each days of the bodies around us, particularly the poor and the hungry, and create us to be people who care and love them as much as you do. Amen.

** additional resource materials/web links** Smith, James Bryan. The Good and Beautiful God, IVP Books, 2009. This is the first of Smiths three books on the Christian spiritual life. It is a great introduction to the interaction between how thoughts about God interact with Christian spiritual practice. Winner, Lauren. Mudhouse Sabbath, Paraclete Press, 2003. You have encountered this book in last months spiritual practice curriculum, but Winner has a wonderful chapter on the body. This is a good resource, particularly for women and for volunteers who have emerged out of more evangelical Christian traditions.

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