Says Thich Nhat Hanh about this meditation: The First time you practice this exercise you might think it is too simple, but after you have been practicing it for some time you shall see how important it is. At first you just recognize and smile to the different parts of your body, but gradually you shall see each individual part clearly and deeply. Every hair and every cell contains all the data necessary to make the universe. That is the teaching of interdependence found in the Avatamsaka sutra. Every hair on your head is a message from the universe. You can realize awakening by meditating on a single hair.

Perhaps it begins with Descartes. Certainly many credit his notion that the body and mind are 2 substances as the beginning of the contemporary mind body split.

Others blame our puritan ancestors and the Christian admonishment "If you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live." (Rom. 8;13 NRSV)

But regardless of where it originated, we are in large part cut off from our bodies. Cultural forces seem to concur that the body should serve the mind; it is a means of productivity. This disconnection is in our art, our worship, our laws, Our way of working.

So many of us sit in front of a computer many hours in a row. We know people as words on a screen. Or we sit in meetings-- our bodies reduced to a conveyance, an inconvenience.

A woman says "since I have been pregnant I have begun to sleep whenever I am tired" her friend looks blankly until she asks "what do you do when you are tired" "Drink more coffee" the friend replies.

The body twitches and wants to move but we ask it to be still. They say the boy children are vulnerable to a massive drop in self esteem around the time they enter first grade, because it is in their nature to move, to wiggle, to run, to experience life by touching, tasting, throwing, banging each new element of the world they meet. And gradually, so that they can live in this society, they do learn to be still, to stop listening to bodies because they get you in trouble.

I think our cultural disconnect from the body is nowhere more clear than in the medical industry. On the one hand, more and more research is being conducted to understand the body in a holistic way. Certainly it has been substantiated that persons are more vulnerable to illness during the stress of major life transitions. We each have probably experienced in our own lives the power a mindset can have on the ability of an individual to heal. And no one will ever forget the brutal experiments done with monkeys showing that an infant deprived of the compassionate touch of another being will die from the lack. I personally have come to believe that the quality of care a medical professional provides extends beyond skill as a surgeon, or effectiveness of drugs prescribed. I believe in the old fashioned value of an ongoing relationship, time spent, knowing several generations of one family and watching their physiology unfold. I believe in the value of an extra moment taken with a patient to make sure she understands the diagnosis and treatment, pausing for a moment in a pre-surgical visit to reassure and steady one entering a personal turning point requiring bravery and trust.

At the same time the practice of medicine has become, over the last decade or so, one governed by the rules of commerce rather than the wisdom of the body. Doctors in this congregation have spoken to me about the pressures of practicing medicine in a climate where insurance agents without the medical background and training of a doctor or nurse are making decisions about diagnosis and treatment. I am told that the structure of the Medicaid program encourages an adversarial relationship between doctor and patient with doctors facing massive fines and even criminal prosecution for clerical errors in their paperwork. And surely each of you knows the disconnect of being a patient in this climate. A dot com goes under and all its employees loose their health insurance, forced to wonder if that cough is a cold or something more. You have heard stories or have experienced yourself waiting months for non-emergency operations or being rushed out of the office by doctors or nurses in understaffed HMOs, as if compassion and medicine have gone their separate ways. You perhaps have experienced something like my friend who said the heartbreak of being diagnosed with cancer, and the pain of surgery was less difficult than the trauma of battling the insurance company to have her surgery covered. The medical system is broken.

In trying to understand the root of this deep disconnect between the vision of healing relationships and the medical industry, Dr. Hempstead, a Psychiatrist in our congregation said she thought it came down to values. Do we as a culture, as a nation, value the body? Do we value health? When fiduciary decisions are being made in Washington, advocates for the body must be speaking too softly or those who have the power to heal are not listening. And we the patients and providers are complicit as well-- in the clinic as well as in the polling booth. We must take responsibility for our bodies in a new way. Imagine what healthcare could be if we agreed that the body was important, that its health was tied in to the health of emotions, mind and spirit. Imagine if doctor, patient and insurance agent all worked together out of a sense that the human body should be cherished.

"If any thing is sacred the human body is sacred," writes Whitman. But do we believe it? The Catholic tradition has a Maundy Thursday ritual that includes foot washing, arising out of the story of Jesus washing his disciples feet at the last supper. I first participated in such a ritual while I was in Seminary. I was with a group of nuns and priests doing service work in a dry dusty place, so that the fine dirt coated us head to toe. For our worship one night after our shoes and boots had all become the same shade of beige, we found the worship leaders had provided 2 clean bowls of water, and a stack of towels. Each of us washed the feet of another and in turn our own feet were washed. How intimate to hold in your hand the foot of another person. How vulnerable to let a stranger touch your dusty feet, hidden all week in socks and boots. Sometimes it is hard to believe in the sacredness of feet. While the mind can be clear and quick, the heart loving and inclusive the body is limited. It is imperfect, it houses our scars, our weaknesses, and so can be the residence of our shame and embarrassment. The religious path is commonly thought to be one that takes us above the tiredness of our hardworking backs, the flesh that wants what it wants. But if we internalize this divide between the striving of the spirit and the limits of the body, it can become a barrier that keeps us from dealing with ourselves.

Jon Sweeney in his book Praying with Our Hands writes that "A pervasive tendency in traditional religion, and throughout much of the history of philosophy, has been toward trying to free oneself form the body's impassioned thoughts and feelings in order to lead the mind, heart, and soul-whatever is left when the body is effectively "removed" - to a purer knowledge of the Divine. The idea: the inapprehensible mysteries of God are hidden in the world or in me, and my body will not help me discover them. With this kind of thinking as our inheritance, it is easy to see how we can be led to focus on the mind at the expense of the body." (p. 23)

This tension between those who believe that the body must be transcended to reach the goal of the spiritual journey and those who believe that the body is integrated through this path came alive for the Gnostics in the first millennium AD who needed to understand whether Jesus was in his body as he was crucified. If Jesus was fully divine, he would avoid the human pain of this brutal execution, but if Jesus was fully embodied, then he would experience his death as you and I will experience our own deaths.

Although his highly Christian language is different than that some of us might choose to describe the same idea, the Carmelite monk William NcNamara illuminates the symbolic implications of this embodiment with these words: "Ever since the Incarnation, when the Word became flesh, no one is permitted to scorn or disregard anything human, natural or earthy, and this includes the body. The incarnation establishes without a doubt once and for all the given-ness of union with God. We do not have to attain divine union. We do not have to climb out of our messy flesh into the pure Spirit of God. God has become man. Our flesh is his flesh. Our body is his body." (Praying with our Hands p. 12)

The Unitarians and Universalists have always emphasized the human nature of Jesus. We have always valued the human experience, this life as lived in a body, instead of looking for an other worldly future. With so strong a humanist strain in our own theology, how can we help but say with Whitman "If any thing is sacred the human body is sacred,"

Therefore I believe that a cutting edge of our work as Unitarian Universalists and as a culture is to heal the perceived schism between mind body emotions and spirit. But this work will be difficult for us, despite how authentically it arises from our history and theology. For example, consider the way we worship. We sit as still and as quietly as possible, rising only on occasion to sing a hymn. Our sanctuary isn't even set up for a pagan spiral dance, or the Shaker Spinning that would properly have accompanied this morning's anthem.

The path through the body is a challenging one. It requires that we become acquainted with eyes, toes and ears, that we acknowledge them and smile at them. How hard it is not to flee the body and its achy joints, as it wiggles during a long sermon saying, "I want to eat, to sleep to dance."

This is the most important reason that our congregation has invested so much of its time and attention this year In the "Our Whole Lives" curriculum (Called OWL for short). We are attempting to teach sexuality in a way that reminds us that it is part of the interconnected web of life, part of our whole selves. The parents of 5 and 6th graders are meeting after church today for the final parent orientation so that their children can bring their Unitarian Universalist humanist values into their bodies and into their lives. The adults of our congregation are invited to be part of their own conversation, recognizing that the deep and complicated relationship with our bodies is not finished in our high school years, but lasts as long as we live. And in fact this adult OWL class begins tomorrow night with 2 specially trained facilitators, and is open to all of you. In this way we begin to address what Prof. Elias Farajaje-Jones of the Starr King Seminary calls the "erotiphobia" of our culture which I believe grows out of a deep distrust of our own bodies.

The other way we as Unitarian Universalists honor our bodies is by putting them on the line for what we believe. Like Servetus who was burned at the stake by Calvin for denying the trinity, like Unitarian minister James Raab who was shot in that infamous march on Selma. We know that it is not merely enough to speak of justice; the body must stand, sit or act in harmony with our speech. We must bring our bodies to city council meetings to advocate for fair housing. We will continue to invite the men and women of Hotel de Zink into our church home because we give more than lipservice to compassion, we offer our bodies as well. And maybe there is even something we can do as individuals or as a community to bring our embodied theology to the medical industry which is itself ill and in need of healing.

What would happen if we listened to our bodies? What would happen if we honored their wisdom? Our body which cramps in the belly when we face conflict, droops when we need rest. Our heart which races when we say something which is not true, but also when we courageously face fear. Our hands which scrub dishes and smooth the hair off a loved one's face. The precious gift of life… is the gift to be embodied.

Breathing in I am aware of my body
Breathing out I smile.

What is your reaction to this sermon? Please send comments to Reverend Darcey Laine