Rev Ingrid Brown ‘Your Body is a Temple’ Sunday March 5th

Your Body is a Temple

gilakas’la / čɛčɛ haθɛč,

I respectfully acknowledge that I live, work, play, and pray within the traditional territory of the K’ómoks Nation

  • Have you ever heard the phrase, “your body is a temple”?
  • It comes from a piece of Scripture – the Apostle Paul writing to the church in Corinth, an Ancient Greek city that still exists today, not far from Athens.
  • Paul is teaching the new church about love, and sex, and food, and conflict resolution, all related to the ways we use our physical body in relation to our spirituality and community.
  • This selection reads, “remember that your bodies were created with dignity..did you not know that your body is a sacred place?  The temple of the Holy Spirit – or rather, the temple of the breath of God?…The physical part of you is not some piece of property belonging to the spiritual part of you.  God holds the whole works!”
  • (selected from 1 Corinthians 6: The Message and IHB translations)

Through this month I invite you to try out some simple spiritual practices so that in our own time we can grow in wisdom, equanimity, and strength of soul by refusing to be drawn into the clamor and chaos of a world on the brink. So that nothing of the raucous will be able to drown our souls and noise. Nothing of self-centeredness will blindness to the work of the creator, who bet began creation.

We know that Nothing of the inherent beauty of life will be found in the grasping for life’s gadgets. It is in spiritual practice that We seek to find our deeper freer selves, richer souls,.

To live a mature spiritual life requires that we choose the values that will ground our hearts, stretch our vision, and give new energy to our hopes.

So the invitation for the month – the weeks of Lent – is to press back against the noise, the chaos, the self centeredness, the gadgets of the world and be intentional about how we choose to use our short wonderful lives.  Not necessarily to have perfect amazing over the top perfect lives, but rather to live an ordinary life extraordinarily well.

So today we consider our bodies.  Not simply, as the reading put it, the property of the spiritual side, or as others have more callously put it, a meat sack, or meat cage, for our spirits.  Before we can embrace spiritual practices, it is important to consider our bodies.  And to decide how to speak to and speak about our bodies, even or especially to ourselves.  Let’s face it, most days we don’t get out of the shower and look at our reflections and think, “ah yes, the temple for the breath of God” right? But what if we could?  What if we dared to?  We talk here a lot about anti-capitalist rebellion, and embracing the sacredness of our bodies is a big f-you to the corporate agenda.

But why does this matter?  Most simply, our bodies are us.  There is not anything that is us that is not here.  And today’s reading reminds us that we are made with dignity.  Dignity: the state or quality of being worthy of honour or respect.  Our bodies were created as worthy of honour and respect.  The breath that fills our lungs is the very breath of God, the pneuma, the ruach.  

How might we live our lives if we really soaked in that reality?

Let’s turn back to the theme “tending our tender hearts: simple practices for a fulfilling spiritual life”.  Our body is the tool that we use for every spiritual practice.  Our body is our connection with God, with one another.  The good news about that is that no matter where you go, you have everything you need to connect with the Divine.

And we start right now.

With our breath.  The pandemic gave me an even greater connection to the importance of breath, as I learned how to breathe through cloth masks.  As I watched my son struggle to breath when he had covid.  To know that my beloved grandmother, my Veti, had her breath constricted to the point of passing from the virus.  Collectively we learned more than we ever wanted to know about different kinds of masks and debated their efficacy.  We spent hours looking at air purifiers online and worried about school buses and classrooms.

Our breath.  Our breathing.  Our life.  Ruach.

Simple Breath Practice

Find a comfortable, quiet place to sit or lie down. For example, try sitting in a chair, sitting cross-legged, or lying on your back with a small pillow under your head and another under your knees.

Place one hand on your upper chest and the other hand on your belly, below the ribcage.
Allow your belly to relax, without forcing it inward by squeezing or clenching your muscles.
Breathe in slowly through your nose. The air should move into your nose and downward so that you feel your stomach rise with your other hand and fall inward (toward your spine).
Exhale slowly through slightly pursed lips. Take note of the hand on your chest, which should remain relatively still.

Repeat for 5-10 minutes.

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