How My Body Speaks…About Religion:
I gave up on religion the summer my father, blind in his beliefs, gave up on me, unable to face the inflammation burning up his daughter from the inside out.
My father's church was about disconnection and dissociation, and a God-the-Father in the image of my father; aloof, judgmental, hypocritical. I suffered in my father's church, where to be wrong with God meant shunning and a shame that saturates my very cells. His church, that cleanly separated my mind from my body, with the precision of a surgeon.
I suffered in my father's church, where to be wrong with God meant shunning and a shame that saturates my very cells.
I long for a connection: to Mystery, to the Divine and something greater than myself. My body craves to be associated, not dissociated; it craves love. It has taken me years to reconnect, to recreate, to renegotiate my bodymind; to join together what was torn apart and find wholeness.
The church I'm sitting in now (words I never thought I'd write) seems to be about connection and embodiment: the Christ a manifestation of the Creator in an effort to feel the messy, painful business of being human, while showing us how to be more Divine in ourselves and in our relationships; and that seems to be a thing I think I can believe in.
I think I can work with the idea that it was religion that hurt me, not Jesus, not the Divine, not the thing I believe saturates, envelopes, and adores every good thing on the earth. It’s really all about Love.
Frankly, I always thought my body would explode in a somatic firestorm if I ever set - arthritic - foot into a church. Tentatively, after each Sunday, I've checked in with myself...and all seems well so far.
And this is how my body speaks about religion...no firestorms yet, no shame. So far, it just seems like more Love, which makes me wonder if others like myself could set foot in church again to find the same?
“...God has a body, a mind, and a spirit: the physical body of Jesus the Godman, the mind of the Father who created the universe in the first place, and the Spirit of God who has been present and active since creation. So because we also have body, mind, and heart, just like God does, then we’re allowing (mind) ourselves to express (body) the love we feel (spirit), and we’re actually participating in God’s nature and becoming more like God.”