“Living in the Body”

© Rev. Susan Karlson
October 10, 2010
Inspired by Joyce Sutphen's poem of the same title


We know about living in the body. Our backs ache sitting too long. Because of the work we do or did so long ago, our knees and hips go out. We grow into the need for glasses, stronger prescriptions all the time. We have a voice that rivals the angels or we sound more like a tomcat wailing in the night. We keep a luxurious head of hair—or we don’t. The spiritual journey always starts with us and so it begins with living in the body.
How do we make peace with the body we’re given and give this one life all we’ve got? The Unitarian Universalist principles promote acceptance of one another, but that implies accepting ourselves too. This is the ongoing search for Truth and Meaning, part of this liberal faith. Truth be told, it’s part of the human story
In 2008, a remarkable event took place. University of Minnesota researchers successfully got a heart from a dead rat to beat again. This is an astonishing true tale that Doris Taylor talks about in an interview with Krista Tippett on her radio program, Being. The scientists start with a dead heart, then they remove the cells by washing soap through them which creates what they call a ghost heart. They introduce stem cells into the organ and feed and nurture it. And then, the heart beats again—pulsating, pink and lovely.
Taylor explained that stem cells are what allow us to heal ourselves. Children fall down all the time but rarely have lifelong scars. Every time there is an injury to our bodies, the body signals that it needs more stem cells. When we are young, the stem cells obey the call and send out a fresh supply. It takes them longer to replenish as we age.
Stress impairs our ability to heal; it reduces our stem cell count. There’s a tiny piece of DNA called a telomere on the end of the cell becomes shorter under stress. When telomeres get to a certain short length the cells signals the body that it’s time to throw in the towel. Then life ends.
Observing this delicate balance between life and death at the cellular level, Taylor hypothesizes that it is possible using stem cells to help the body to repair itself and reverse the effects of aging. Her work is fascinating and though I share her hope of finding cures for debilitating, chronic illnesses and relieving suffering, I doubt that the fountain of youth and immortality are possible or desirable.
Another key element of her research involves meditation and healing. Short periods of meditation may profoundly enhance the number of stem cells. It may well be that alternative holistic modalities like meditation, yoga, prayer and other spiritual practices documented to reduce stress also increase the body’s ability to produce additional stem cells, leading to regeneration and renewal in the body.
All of this promising work with stem cells has far reaching implications for the emotional, physical, mental and spiritual components of our lives. The spiritual implication is to connect to that spark of mystery and divine life within us—as scientists don’t know how a cell even exists. We also need to honors our bodies, grow and nurture our hearts, and transforms our relationships.
Forrest Church, well known Unitarian Universalist minister who served All Souls Church in Manhattan, talked and wrote about living fully and with zest though we are inching closer to death all the time. In our culture, we try to hide from the realities of aging, death and dying. Avoidance or denial leads us further away from accepting our bodies and ourselves, further from a quest for truth and meaning. The temporary relief we feel comes at the expense of our peace and equanimity. We can’t deceive ourselves but for so long. The poem, Living in the Body refers to seeing the same face in the mirror, the same skin over the same bones; knowing that we can only make certain changes in the body—as Joyce Sutphen says, “better to leave it as it is.”
When I think of our mortal nature, I turn often to the image of the hauntingly beautiful live oak trees. When I lived in Mississippi I would look at those ancient survivors that had weathered hurricanes, tornadoes and human selfishness. I would sing to them, praise them, be reminded of what a joy it is to be alive especially when I felt small and weighted down with some human complaint.
For though the live oaks are twisted, gnarled and bent in their dipping down to the ground and stretching up to the sky they endure. Their image brings me back to my own fragile, evolving body. They are a reminder that we humans too find ways to bend, change and endure.
Our culture touts youth—the current proverb is that the 40 is the new 30 and that those in their 50s are as spry as their parents at 40. What’s up with that? It seems self deceptive—like we can trick our bodies and imagine we are not our current biological age. We can keep fit and take care of our diets, keep challenging our minds but why this focus on the fountain of youth, on being something we are not any longer?
We can understand it—our bodies get sick, there are aches and pains and illnesses. We don’t want to dwell on those aspects of living in the body yet we can’t deny that our bodies change as we get older. I admire so many red and purple hat ladies who adopt the outlook, “when I am an old woman, I shall wear purple with a red hat which doesn’t go and doesn’t suit me…” ( from the book, "When I Am An Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple", Editd by Sandra Martz, Papier Mache Press--Watsonville, California 1987). They are accepting of who they are in their bodies as they are.
The particular path we take to grow spiritually and morally doesn’t matter so much. Some will count their breaths, become more aware of breathing in peace, breathing out love. Some will pray, sing, dance, or cultivate and create something beautiful. Unitarian Universalists find meaning and truth in any of these forms just as anyone else. No one searches entirely in isolation—our life journeys are connected to others, but we start and return and endure in these bodies, alone.
Mary Oliver’s poem, Wild Geese, reminds us “you do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”
May you befriend your body and find that live oak part of yourself that weathers every storm and bends gracefully in the wind. Amen and blessed be.