Our bodies have faith. It dwells in our muscles. It lingers in our senses. It comes alive in our hands, vocal chords, and stomachs. Faith is not just a work of the mind. It is a way of life and a work of the body. [1]
After a year of COVID-19 pandemic and church over the internet, the faith of Christians’ bodies has undergone significant changes. For a number of us Christians, our mouths have not tasted Eucharist. Ears and voices have not joined in song. Hands have not touched the wooden pews or grasped one another to exchange peace. Bodies sit in separate abodes before screens for worship, Bible studies, and meetings. Simple Monday-through-Saturday practices like sharing food, serving others, and visiting one another either have not been able to happen at all or have had to look and feel so different from pre-COVID activities.
Bodies have endured a lot of loss, isolation, grief, uncertainty, and flux through this year of pandemic. Our bodies have had to leap in faith again and again into unfamiliar and vulnerable spaces to trust that God is still with us, to trust that we are still part of one another in Christ, to trust that our bodies are finding a way to keep faith through it all.
And the dedication with which our bodies have carried us through this monumental year of pandemic is astounding. They have pressed on, sometimes stumbling, other times sprinting, through the changes and monotonies. They have shouted to us when they have needed extra care, when they have witnessed injustice, and when the postures, motions, and sensory landscapes of this alternate reality have felt too disembodying. They have breathed for us, nourished us, warmed us, and protected us. And through it all, they haven’t forgotten how to do joy.
After a year of our bodies’ devotion to us, what if we took time to honor the faith our bodies have? How might we create space and time for hospitality toward our bodies to show us their hopes and fears, longings and limits, pain and delight? What might we learn from our feet, organs, skin, fingertips, noses, nerves, and bones about God, love, justice, and new creation?
If you need a place to start, I invite you to consider one (or more) of these questions:
What could our bodies teach us about grieving after a year inundated with grief?
What could our bodies show us about forging solidarity and doing justice in a society structured by racism, classism, sexism, and heterosexism?
What could our bodies tell us about resting after fourteen months of pandemic stress?
So much of Christian tradition has taught us to wield faith against our bodies. But none of us has faith without our bodies. Why not embrace this truth that the pandemic has exposed and find life-giving ways to move forward with our bodies in faith?
Notes & References
- The work of many scholars has helped me understand this truth. Three I want to highlight here are theologian John Swinton, whose keynote address about his book Dementia: Living in the Memories of God (published by Eerdmans in 2012) at a Duke Graduate Conference around five years ago illuminated the significance of the body in faith practices in his work with people with dementia; Marcia Mount Shoop, who places the body at the center of her theological description of what it means to be human as well as at the center of her proposals for how to do church in Let the Bones Dance: Embodiment and the Body of Christ (published by Westminster John Knox in 2010); and sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, who discusses how practices form bodies and beliefs (broadly understood, not specifically limited to religious ideas) reside in bodies through practices in his book The Logic of Practice (published in English by Stanford University Press in 1990).
Featured image of “Hands” is by Ricardo Gomez Angel on the Unsplash website, https://www.unsplash.com.
