I was moved by Sister Ann Jackson’s blog last week entitled “Coming Home.” What especially spoke to me was the stanza from the poem she shared by Jane Hooper as cited in Cynthia Bourgeault’s book The Wisdom Way of Knowing (p. 38–40).
Please come home. Please come home INTO YOUR OWN BODY.
Your own vessel, your own earth.
Please come home into each and every cell,
And fully into the space that surrounds you.
As we find ourselves in the midst of times like most of us have never known, we may feel the stress of being restricted from our normal, daily routine. During these days perhaps we can hear the divine invitation to be more intentional about coming home into our own bodies in prayerful ways.
A few years ago, I was a participant of the two-year Academy for Spiritual Formation, an Upper Room ministry. One of our presenters was Rev. Jane E. Vennard, an adjunct professor of spirituality at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado. In her book Praying with Body and Soul, she recalls how most of us were taught as children that our prayer posture was eyes closed, body still, hands folded, heads bowed. She wonders, “What might happen if we reversed this standard procedure of teaching the body and allowed the body to teach us?” (p. 9).
How might we come home into our own body and allow our prayers during this time to be embodied in new ways? Vennard suggests some ways to begin that are as simple as placing our hands over our hearts or on a pulse point to feel the beating and the blood that courses through our veins, giving thanks for the wonder of our bodies. Perhaps it’s as simple as paying attention to our breath, giving gratitude for the breath of life and allowing our breath to become prayer as we focus on the inhalation/exhalation. “As we remember who and whose we are, we might imagine we are breathing out whatever is bothering us and breathing in whatever we need” (p. 13). During these days of anxiety and stress from many places, to remember to breathe is an important part of how we care for ourselves. The breath prayer reminds us of our connection with those who are suffering, with those who are on the front lines of caring for others, with all others around the world who are part of the human community and with the One who breathes the breath of life into each of us.
Another suggestion offered by Rev. Vennard may be a bit more challenging for us—but maybe challenging times call for prayers that literally stretch us. She invites us to embody the movements suggested as we pray with Scripture passages—the bent-over woman in Luke 13: 10–13, Mary and Martha in Luke10:38–42 or blind Bartimaeus in Mark 10:46–52. Many of the psalms invite us to pay attention to body postures as we enter into them.
There’s also the invitation to befriend our body “to make sure that we know that the body is not excluded from our spiritual life” (p. 19). Liturgical movement and liturgical dance might be ways to incorporate more movement into our life of prayer as we come home into our own body. In another Academy experience, I was introduced to the Elm Dance—a dance that began in Germany in the 1980s. In her Work That Reconnects, in 1992, Joanna Macy took the dance to workshops in areas affected by the Chernobyl disaster. She describes it in her book Coming Back to Life as “an expression of the people’s will to live … The dance helps us feel more fully our gratitude and grief … to know that we are many and that we are linked in ways we cannot see” (p. 101). (Click here to watch a sacred circle Elm Dance.)
In these days of social distancing—or as a Jewish Rabbi friend Chava Bahle suggests social spaciousness—when we can’t touch, we can use the images from this Elm Dance to remind us of our connections with all creation. Imagine yourself as the trees, rooted and grounded in our Creator’s love and compassion. Come into your body as you move along with the music and the image of holding the world close in your heart, feeling both our gratitude and our grief as we send the Divine love and healing compassion out into the world.
—Rev. Rose M. Blank, Prairiewoods volunteer