Our Bodies Are Blessings
Our Bodies Are Blessings
Sermon delivered May 21, 2017
Peterborough Unitarian Universalist Church
Rev. Diana K. McLean
As I was preparing this sermon earlier this week and thinking about how our bodies are blessings, I focused in particular on bodies which may not be treated by our society as the blessings they are: transgender bodies like that of Jazz, the real-life girl in today’s Time For All Ages story. Black and brown bodies, treated for centuries in this country as less valuable than white bodies. Bodies of people who do not fit neatly into the binary gender system we now know to be false. Bodies with abilities different from what our culture thinks of as the ideal.
In other words, bodies we may sometimes exclude from our first principle, which affirms the inherent worth and dignity of each person. Maybe we don’t think of bodies as the same as people--and they’re not. We are much more than our bodies. And yet, our bodies are undeniably an important part of who we are. It is impossible, from a theological standpoint, to honor our worth and dignity if we are talking only about our personalities, our minds and spirits, and not also our bodies in which all those other parts of us live.
Every body has different abilities. Some sing well, and some don’t. Some see well, and some see fine with glasses, and some don’t see at all. Some walk, and some walk with assistance or roll. All of them do the most important thing: they house our spirits, our minds, our personalities...not just our literal brains and hearts, but the intangible parts of us that really make up what is most important about us.
A lot of people have begun using the language of “temporarily able-bodied” when describing themselves, in recognition that over time, especially if we are blessed with a long life, our bodies will lose some of the abilities they had when younger. Some of us will experience temporary or permanent losses of ability much sooner than old age--I learned that when I broke my ankle badly a year and a half ago. I am still working to regain full strength and to be pain-free every day instead of just on good days. That’s a small thing compared to the physical challenges many people face, but it was enough to make me aware of how physical ability is not guaranteed, not something we should take for granted. It’s one of the motivating factors behind my desire to make our beautiful old building as accessible to bodies of all kinds as possible--I remember all too well what it felt like to serve and preach in a church where I couldn’t get to the pulpit for a couple of months.
As I continued working on this sermon later in the week, I realized that I’d missed some things, left some bodies out of that list I made about types of bodies often treated as “less than.” I’m sure that even now, I have still left some out, unintentionally. If you find yourself among those, I apologize and I hope you’ll come talk to me.
I had left out, for example, the issue of body size and shape as one of the ways in which some bodies are seen as better than others, more of a blessing than others. Our culture judges some bodies too small and some too big. I have been on both sides of that spectrum in my lifetime. Many of us have been. I’m not asking you to identify yourself in any way, but just think, have you ever judged your body to be the wrong size? This is separate from having concerns about your health. I belong to a group focused on “health and wellness at every size” which means instead of judging our body’s well-being by weight, we consider factors like cardiovascular health, cholesterol levels, sugar levels, etc. So we might have goals about health, but instead of, “I want to weigh a certain number of pounds” or “I want to fit into a certain size of jeans” the goal might be “I want to have both my cholesterol and sugar levels controlled through healthy lifestyle choices rather than medication.”
It was only a few days ago that I realized I was focusing on bodies that are, for the most part, not like my own. It wasn’t intentional, but I was keeping myself out of the topic to a certain degree. Then I found myself writing in that private group on Facebook:
“I chose the sermon title "Our Bodies are Blessings" for this coming Sunday a few weeks back (our monthly theme is Embodiment) and gee, look who showed up, it's my body image issues. Shoulda seen that one coming. Clearly a case of preaching what I need to hear.
Also, I ordered some new clothes online for General Assembly next month, including social time out with people whom I rarely see, and those clothes will arrive this week. There’s nothing like trying on clothes to further activate my body image issues. So I probably ought to write the sermon now, before the clothes arrive, so it still says what I need to preach (and hear).
In a moment of concern for pastoral boundaries, I asked my friend and colleague Rev. Dawn Fortune, who many of you will remember delivered the charge to you at the installation two weeks ago, whether it was appropriate to mention my own body image issues in a sermon. Dawn replied, “Dear God, you’d hardly be an American human if you didn’t have body image issues.”
Talking about bodies at all can be hard, and talking about our own can be even harder, especially for those of us raised, as I was, in a Midwestern culture of modesty. Heavens, stand up here and mention my own human body in more than the merest of passing comments? I wasn’t sure I could do that.
And yet, I wondered this week whether it might be possible that I am contributing, if not to body shaming, at least to a repressive culture about our bodies and their worthiness or lack thereof by not talking about bodies in general, and by not including my own body when I do talk about them.
Of course, there are good reasons to have very healthy boundaries around how I talk about anything personal in my role as minister. But I am a minister who does my work in this body, and what does it mean if I don’t talk about that? What am I saying if I don’t confess that just as I share every other human foible with all of you, I also share a tendency to judge my own body much more harshly than I would ever judge anyone else’s?
Not all body-based discrimination is external. Sometimes we commit it against ourselves.
I have said to countless people now, both friends and congregants, after hearing them talk negatively about their bodies, “Is that a comment you would make to a friend about their body?” To a person, the answer was a vehement “no.” I then asked them to consider why it felt okay to talk to themselves that way. I try to remember that for myself, too, but sometimes I fail.
I feel like my own relationship with my body has a bit of a Goldilocks and the Three Bears quality to it. In early adolescence, due in part to some medical issues, I was “too thin.” Then for a while I was “just right” but often felt like I was bordering on “too heavy” because I was used to being so skinny. And then as an adult I’ve struggled with my weight and often thought of myself, or been labeled by others, as “too heavy.”
Somewhere on Facebook, I once saw an image with the caption “I’m a size awesome.” What if we could all think of ourselves that way, not just with regard to size but about our bodies in general? What if we could feel awe instead of embarrassment, love instead of shame?
Whether we been told by ourselves or others that we are too big or too small...
Whether we’ve been told our body is fit or unfit…
Whether we’ve been told our skin is too light, just right, or too dark…
Whether our body has been seen by us or others as “able” or “disabled”...
May we know that our bodies, imperfect as they all are to one degree or another, are still blessings.
©2017 Diana K. McLean. Used with permission of the author.
Sermon delivered May 21, 2017
Peterborough Unitarian Universalist Church
Rev. Diana K. McLean
As I was preparing this sermon earlier this week and thinking about how our bodies are blessings, I focused in particular on bodies which may not be treated by our society as the blessings they are: transgender bodies like that of Jazz, the real-life girl in today’s Time For All Ages story. Black and brown bodies, treated for centuries in this country as less valuable than white bodies. Bodies of people who do not fit neatly into the binary gender system we now know to be false. Bodies with abilities different from what our culture thinks of as the ideal.
In other words, bodies we may sometimes exclude from our first principle, which affirms the inherent worth and dignity of each person. Maybe we don’t think of bodies as the same as people--and they’re not. We are much more than our bodies. And yet, our bodies are undeniably an important part of who we are. It is impossible, from a theological standpoint, to honor our worth and dignity if we are talking only about our personalities, our minds and spirits, and not also our bodies in which all those other parts of us live.
Every body has different abilities. Some sing well, and some don’t. Some see well, and some see fine with glasses, and some don’t see at all. Some walk, and some walk with assistance or roll. All of them do the most important thing: they house our spirits, our minds, our personalities...not just our literal brains and hearts, but the intangible parts of us that really make up what is most important about us.
A lot of people have begun using the language of “temporarily able-bodied” when describing themselves, in recognition that over time, especially if we are blessed with a long life, our bodies will lose some of the abilities they had when younger. Some of us will experience temporary or permanent losses of ability much sooner than old age--I learned that when I broke my ankle badly a year and a half ago. I am still working to regain full strength and to be pain-free every day instead of just on good days. That’s a small thing compared to the physical challenges many people face, but it was enough to make me aware of how physical ability is not guaranteed, not something we should take for granted. It’s one of the motivating factors behind my desire to make our beautiful old building as accessible to bodies of all kinds as possible--I remember all too well what it felt like to serve and preach in a church where I couldn’t get to the pulpit for a couple of months.
As I continued working on this sermon later in the week, I realized that I’d missed some things, left some bodies out of that list I made about types of bodies often treated as “less than.” I’m sure that even now, I have still left some out, unintentionally. If you find yourself among those, I apologize and I hope you’ll come talk to me.
I had left out, for example, the issue of body size and shape as one of the ways in which some bodies are seen as better than others, more of a blessing than others. Our culture judges some bodies too small and some too big. I have been on both sides of that spectrum in my lifetime. Many of us have been. I’m not asking you to identify yourself in any way, but just think, have you ever judged your body to be the wrong size? This is separate from having concerns about your health. I belong to a group focused on “health and wellness at every size” which means instead of judging our body’s well-being by weight, we consider factors like cardiovascular health, cholesterol levels, sugar levels, etc. So we might have goals about health, but instead of, “I want to weigh a certain number of pounds” or “I want to fit into a certain size of jeans” the goal might be “I want to have both my cholesterol and sugar levels controlled through healthy lifestyle choices rather than medication.”
It was only a few days ago that I realized I was focusing on bodies that are, for the most part, not like my own. It wasn’t intentional, but I was keeping myself out of the topic to a certain degree. Then I found myself writing in that private group on Facebook:
“I chose the sermon title "Our Bodies are Blessings" for this coming Sunday a few weeks back (our monthly theme is Embodiment) and gee, look who showed up, it's my body image issues. Shoulda seen that one coming. Clearly a case of preaching what I need to hear.
Also, I ordered some new clothes online for General Assembly next month, including social time out with people whom I rarely see, and those clothes will arrive this week. There’s nothing like trying on clothes to further activate my body image issues. So I probably ought to write the sermon now, before the clothes arrive, so it still says what I need to preach (and hear).
In a moment of concern for pastoral boundaries, I asked my friend and colleague Rev. Dawn Fortune, who many of you will remember delivered the charge to you at the installation two weeks ago, whether it was appropriate to mention my own body image issues in a sermon. Dawn replied, “Dear God, you’d hardly be an American human if you didn’t have body image issues.”
Talking about bodies at all can be hard, and talking about our own can be even harder, especially for those of us raised, as I was, in a Midwestern culture of modesty. Heavens, stand up here and mention my own human body in more than the merest of passing comments? I wasn’t sure I could do that.
And yet, I wondered this week whether it might be possible that I am contributing, if not to body shaming, at least to a repressive culture about our bodies and their worthiness or lack thereof by not talking about bodies in general, and by not including my own body when I do talk about them.
Of course, there are good reasons to have very healthy boundaries around how I talk about anything personal in my role as minister. But I am a minister who does my work in this body, and what does it mean if I don’t talk about that? What am I saying if I don’t confess that just as I share every other human foible with all of you, I also share a tendency to judge my own body much more harshly than I would ever judge anyone else’s?
Not all body-based discrimination is external. Sometimes we commit it against ourselves.
I have said to countless people now, both friends and congregants, after hearing them talk negatively about their bodies, “Is that a comment you would make to a friend about their body?” To a person, the answer was a vehement “no.” I then asked them to consider why it felt okay to talk to themselves that way. I try to remember that for myself, too, but sometimes I fail.
I feel like my own relationship with my body has a bit of a Goldilocks and the Three Bears quality to it. In early adolescence, due in part to some medical issues, I was “too thin.” Then for a while I was “just right” but often felt like I was bordering on “too heavy” because I was used to being so skinny. And then as an adult I’ve struggled with my weight and often thought of myself, or been labeled by others, as “too heavy.”
Somewhere on Facebook, I once saw an image with the caption “I’m a size awesome.” What if we could all think of ourselves that way, not just with regard to size but about our bodies in general? What if we could feel awe instead of embarrassment, love instead of shame?
Whether we been told by ourselves or others that we are too big or too small...
Whether we’ve been told our body is fit or unfit…
Whether we’ve been told our skin is too light, just right, or too dark…
Whether our body has been seen by us or others as “able” or “disabled”...
May we know that our bodies, imperfect as they all are to one degree or another, are still blessings.
©2017 Diana K. McLean. Used with permission of the author.