Seeing Worship Through The Perspective of Our Bodies
I wonder how our bodies experience a worship service? How are our bodies honored, evoked and included when we gather for worship. Let’s take a little trip with our bodies through a traditional worship service. I say traditional worship, but even my more holistic and progressive community could benifet from an exploration this question.
Dress in something uncomfortable that nurtures the ego but not the body. Get out of the car, walk, greet, talk, shake, smile, walk, sit… listen… stand, sing, sit… listen… recite… stand, shake, smile, sit, sing… sit… listen…think… think… think.. think… sit… listen…stand, sing, sit…listen, pass… sing… (maybe once a month take communion) stand, walk, break, dip, eat, walk, sit… listen, stand, walk, greet, smile, walk…
No wonder worship is rarely a holistic transformative experience! From our bodies perspective you could be a robot and participate in many of worship services. The primarily part of our body that is honored, evoked and included in traditional worship services is our brain. Most of worship happens above the neck! Our brains and minds can help us to talk about God and think about God, but they can also hinder us from experiencing God.
If we are going to have an experience of God it is going to happen in and through our bodies – through our feelings, emotions, thoughts and sensations. Through all of us! If we are going to become channels of love our bodies must be opened up and purified so that can express the movement of God’s Spirit. It is possible in worship to transcend our normal particularly bodily experiences and move into a more expansive experience of the collective spirit, but this transcendence comes because our bodies have first been welcomed, evoked and included. There is no integration of the body which does not first include the body. If our bodies with all there sensations, emotions, feelings, thoughts and desires are not first welcomed and honored they can not be transcended and integrated. Our experience of being a particular body must be affirmed and celebrated before we can expand our awareness of being the collective body and consciousness of Christ.
Deep spiritual experiences are often all encompassing. They evoke strong emotion, they honor and include the body, they integrate a variety of sensations. If the whole body and the whole of the human experience is not welcomed, evoked, honored and included in worship will it be able to fully nurture and cultivated our relationships with and participation in the Divine life, which transforms us into both the consciousness and the literal body of Christ.
This reflection is an invitation to join in the movement of creating more body affirming and evoking practices of Christian worship. Your thoughts and ideas are welcome.
