The body and prayer
30 Apr 2010
Extreme ascetic practices have thankfully moved to the margins of church life. Some continue to exist, such as the re-enactment of the crucifixion in the Philippines and self flaguation. There are some who do not eat meat during Lent within even my own congregation. I am impressed by their commitment but prefer to offer prayer and praise to God from a full heart rather than an empty stomach. (Michael Casey, Toward God, p. 107) Others postpone breakfast on Sunday morning until they have come to church to receive holy communion. The relationship the disciple of Christ has with their body has been a complex one as Church history highlights. My interest is in how our bodies relate to our life of prayer because our bodies are intimately connected with our prayer life, helping or hindering it.
For much of my life I didn’t pay much attention to my body, or how it was employed in prayer and worship. I was typical of many men, focused on the outward world, the world of action, who saw their body as an instrument which did the bidding of the mind. What we thought we had to do, the body would obligingly carry it out. It was our obedient servant to our will. The body was distanced from the ‘real us’, the head and mind. This is a dualism which has a very long history in Western culture, one which we have inherited from the Greeks and baptised into the Church.
This separation came to an abrupt end about 10 years ago. In midlife my body began to make little protests and noises to get my attention. At first I ignored its bleating. Then I developed a trifecta of Coeliac Disease, high blood pressure and Fructose intolerance. I could no longer ignore my body or treat it with disdain; a machine which would obey my plans, my will and faithfully carry out my wishes. My daily liturgy has become to holdout my hand to receive two tablets to control my blood pressure and a third to help protect my esophagus damaged by the undiagnosed Coeliac Disease.
My ‘labora’, the daily work of the Benedictine monk, is to swim twice a week to control my weight and to help my cardio-vascular system remain at least at a functional level. Walking regularly is required to keep my back from developing painful muscle spasm. I have had to wean myself from the Western diet of high fat and sugar, or else I will undoubtedly develop Type 2 diabetes and my doctor has whispered that my cholesterol level is dangerously high and I risk needing another tablet a day to control it.
Now the temptations I battle with are not found in the desert where Anthony wrested with the demons, but in the suburbs, where the daily temptation is offered by the innocent coffee or the sugary soft drink, especially those with caffeine added. I find them addictive and when the sugar and caffeine are combined together, they produce a high as tangible as the effect of a good glass of wine on my brain – or any other mind altering pharmacology. Chemicals I would have formerly ignored, I now see are seeping into my body and poisoning it. I have finally had to come to grips with this thing, my body. There is no other I can trade this one in for. It is like our earth, sustaining our human race, yet we are destroying it. There is no other planet we can get to replace it; there is no other body available to replace this one, the one I have, so I had better care for it as God has given it to me as a gift. I need to be a steward of God’s grace, extending this ‘grace’ toward even my body.
We, the majority who comprise our local churches, are paralysised from doing anything which will deliver us from the vicious grip of over eating, our slothfulness, our self indulgence and the excessive consumption of food. Our apathy about the starving poor mirrors our short sightedness of our own over consumption, We seem indifferent to the powerful cultural messages which keep us trapped; that it is no accident that there are advertisements for fast food on our television at tea time; or that the shopping mall would be incomplete without luxurious coffee shops, cake shops and other food providers. Our churches are not havens from our bodily passions, but subtly continue to support them with many of our events and meetings centered around – food. Often its not good food either. It’s like inviting a recovering alcoholic to a meeting at the local pub.
No, we cannot separate our bodies from our prayer lives. If they are sick, overweight or tired, our prayer life suffers. If we are suffering sleep apnoea, we will be incapable of praying without falling asleep. The common cold affects both our bodies, our minds and our emotional lives, so how can we be so blind not to see that the condition of our bodies will affect our prayer lives? A new askesis (Gk for discipline), which seems to be lacking in the ‘New Monasticism’ movement, must include the discipline of our bodies and weaning it from our Western culture’s unhealthy food habits.
The intimate link between our bodies and our worship and prayer is seen in our worship services where we kneel for prayer and at the communion rail to receive the sacrament of holy communion. It is the posture of humility and dependence upon God. We stand in the liturgical traditions of the Church, to listen to the gospel reading and for the holy communion thanksgiving prayer, a sign of our respect. In some churches and during the daily office, we bow in respect to the altar in the church and to each other because we all bear the image of God. We prostrate our bodies, as a sign of reverence, abasement and plea for mercy. We lift our hands to express our praise. We shake hands to express our welcome of the other, the stranger and our neighbour who is forgiven and reconciled on the same basis as me at the greeting of the peace. We lay hands on children to bless them and to pray for people, a sign of our identification with them and their setting apart (consecration). We make the sign of the cross at the invocation of the Holy Trinity and prior to receiving the body and blood of Christ. Pilgrimages unite heart, body and spirit in the action of walking. Our bodies are intimately tied to our worship, our life of prayer. Church worship is kinesthetic. To have a healthy prayer life will require some attention to our body, especially a healthy body.
However, when the Reformation was underway, this union of body and prayer began to separate. The emphasis shifted away from a focus on the eucharist to a focus on the sermon and the receptacle for the sermon was the mind. Worship became more static and the amount of area allocated to allow physical movement in a church decreased. The sensory elements were purified from the churches; just white and black would do, mirroring the doctrinal precision of its churches leaders. Either you were right (white) in your doctrine or wrong (black). In the Presbyterian, Baptist and later Church of Christ congregations, the people were now served communion, and this too resulted in less bodily movement around the church. The body was confined to tight pews; it was in the mind where the worship now took place. (In the Georgian Churches here in Australia (which were constructed in New South Wales and Tasmania), the pews even have doors on them, preventing movement.) Thank God for the Charismatic Renewal which helped get the Church in touch with their bodies again and helped get them moving.
My body is the temple in which the Holy Spirit dwells. (1 Corinthians 6:19-20) It was this truth that Paul appealed to as one of several arguments to stop the Corinthian Christians from indulging in promiscuous sex or intercourse with the temple prostitute. The sins committed by the human body could not be separated from realm of the spirit or soul because we are a psycho-sexual pneumatic being, clothed in flesh; just like the Incarnation of Christ, but we forget this too often. Irresponsible sexual expression will pollute our spirituality, sever our relationship with God and lead to a divided self. I am accustomed to thinking that my body belongs to me; but it’s not my own, it belongs to God; it is in this body that Christ now dwells, and in which the Father has come to live. Our sexuality is not just a bodily desire, but interconnects with our need for intimacy, touch and love. To treat it negatively is to fall again, into dualism with catastrophic results. A lack of awareness of how our sexuality interacts with who we are and our behaviour has led to tragic consequences for sexual abuse victims. But flirting, the dress by men and women in provocative clothing and the ‘projection’ by men of a persona of confidence and strength are more subtle ways our sexuality might be displayed, even within our local congregation. The common reaction to the awareness that we are sexually endowed people with desires is repression, if not denial. This is simple legalism, usually imposed by those who are least comfortable with who they are. A better way than repression or denial of our sexuality is to call our desire the ‘sacred flame’, which needs protection from burning others when expressed inappropriately or by exploitation. This sacred flame needs tending when our bodies and relationships are tired and frayed and is a gift too, with all the other things which make us who we are in God’s image.
The church history record of the treatment of the body has been by and large, negative. The monastic movement has certainly contributed to this portrayal. However, what we need is integration, not separation, if our contemplation is to grow and deepen. The following example taken from the Desert Fathers (200-450 AD) highlights this integration and the need to pay attention to the body and to treat it with respect, or else our life of prayer will be effected. And its taken from the very body of work which has traditionally eschewed our sexuality.
“They said of one monk that he had lived in the world and had turned to God, but was still goaded by desire for his wife; and he told this to the monks. When they saw him to be a man of prayer and one who did more than his duty, they laid on him a course of discipline which so weakened his body that he could not even stand up. By God’s providence another monk came to visit Scetis. When he came to this man’s cell he saw it open, and he passed on, surprised that no one came to meet him. But then he thought that perhaps the brother inside was ill, and returned, and knocked on the door. After knocking, he went in, and found the monk gravely ill. He said, ‘What’s the matter, abba?’ He explained, ‘I used to live in the world, and the enemy still troubles me because of my wife. I told the monks, and they laid on me various burdens to discipline my life. In trying to carry them out obediently, I have fallen ill and yet the temptation is worse.‘ When the visiting hermit heard this, he was vexed, and said, ‘These monks are powerful men, and meant well in laying these burdens upon you. But if you will listen to me who am but a child in these matters, stop all this discipline, take a little food at the proper times, recover your strength, join in the worship of God for a little, and turn your mind to the Lord. This desire is something you can’t conquer by your own efforts. The human body is like a coat. If you treat it carefully, it will last a long time. If you neglect it, it will fall to pieces.’ The sick man did as he was told, and in a few days the incitement to lust vanished. “ (The Desert Fathers (Translated by Benedicta Ward, Penguin Books, London: 2003; p. 49.)
Contemplative prayer by its very nature, is to bring a unity between God and ourselves through an unmediated experience. To lapse into some expression of dualism is to impose a separation and division between what is an integrated whole (body, mind and spirit) which is against the very expression or theology of contemplation. Contemplative prayer I’ve noticed, has helped me to locate myself in God (‘Your life is hidden in Christ’ as Paul writes in Col 3:3) and can help us to become reconciled to our bodies, to listen to them and treat them with respect. As I grow older, I am increasingly reconciled to the fact, that my body will in the end, determine much of what I am able to do and where I am able to go. (The prophecy by Jesus to Peter about his lack of freedom in his old age is one which can take note for our own old age. [Jn 21:18-19])
Eventually this body will be like all of the things I struggle with to relinquish to God, be overcome by death but also resurrection. The offering (oblation) of my body earlier in my life to God (Rom 12:1-3), to remain chaste until married, and even now to remain chaste from all other things which will pollute my body, will one day be fully realised. In between its nourished by the oblation of Christ’s body through our participation in the body and blood of our communion with Christ. (Here I am remembering the words from the Prayer Book for Australia, the Words of Consecration, p. 112.) That God regards our bodies as something important is seen by the way he will resurrect them. This fact and its power casts its shadow back from beyond the end of time, into this age where death and destruction reign. Together with all the creation, our bodies, a microcosm of the greater creation, will with it be transformed by the resurrection power of Christ, because our bodies are not independent of this creation. For God to transform one will by necessity of its intimate connection to the other require both to be transformed; and that as both are injured by sin, both will be redeemed by Christ (Rom 8:18-25). The gift of the Spirit by God himself, is his promise and confirmation to strengthen our hope that what we hope for will be given, if not in this age, then certainly in the age to come.
Our prayer to God, involves our body. Our life in God and participation in the life of the trinity incorporates (in corporal – Latin to embody) the totality of ‘us’. If our bodies are neglected, afflicted or poisoned with modern food additives, we will be affected and this will also affect our prayer life too. Christianity is not a disembodied religion as the incarnation of Christ attests, but a religion which should be able to integrate body, soul, spirit and mind into a unified whole in God, who gives us life. Contemplative prayer then, should not be seen to be against the body, ignoring the body, or disparaging the body but helping us intregrate our body into our union with Christ himself.
