Stephanie Paulsell - Honoring the Body: Meditations on a Christian Practice

In this time of rapid social change and widespread spiritual seeking, many people yearn for a way of life that is good in a deep sense and attuned to the presence of God. Yet the contours of such a way can be difficult to see. What might it mean to live with integrity and hope when the pace of existence is accelerating and lifes patterns are in flux? What is the shape of a life lived in right relation to other people, to the created world, and to God? Is it possible to imagine not just getting by but flourishingas individuals, as communities, and as a global society, in concert with creation and in communion with God?

Such questions are in the hearts and minds of many seekers who are exploring spirituality today. Whether they grew up beyond religious communities or left the religious households of their childhood, they are now searching for some context of larger belonging and some pattern of believing and valuing that is richer and deeper than that offered by the wider culture. And life-long Christians are pondering these questions as well, longing for a profound and relevant understanding of what Christian faith has to do with their work, with friendship and marriage, with the way they raise their children, with public life and politics, and with how they use their time and money.

The Practices of Faith Series offers help drawn from the deep wells of Christian history, belief, and experience to people who long for a way of life that can be lived with integrity in our time. Books in this series focus on the practices through which Christian people seek to live in response to the love and grace of God. Practices are shared activities that address fundamental human needs; when woven together over time, they form a way of life. Reflecting on Christian practices, seekers and those who belong to other traditions will discover insights into matters of human flourishing that are of urgent concern to all thoughtful people, while Christian readers will encounter fresh perspectives on their long-cherished beliefs.

In Honoring the Body, Stephanie Paulsell invites readers to explore a practice without which we quite literally cannot live, but which is nonetheless severely endangered. At the core of this practice is that most fundamental fact about ourselves and othersembodiment, and with it the capacity for pleasure and suffering, for exertion and rest, for generativity and death. And yet today the human bodyso intricate and capable, and yet so vulnerableis threatened by dishonor, as a few impossibly perfect bodies are glorified while many, many others are despised as the wrong weight or the wrong color or the wrong something else. Paulsell does not recoil from directing our gaze to the terrible treatment some bodies receive, but her guiding purpose is to disclose how a Christian practice can guide us into a better way. Other aspects of the same practice encourage honor for the body in its strength and pleasure. Paulsell explores the moves and gestures of this practicethe washing of feet, the sharing of food, a babys bath, and many morewithin the context of everyday life, while also surrounding contemporary practice with a cloud of biblical and historical witnesses. All of these are in turn surrounded by Gods embrace of the human body, which is created in Gods own image, known by God in the incarnation of Jesus, and made newly alive, though still bearing wounds, in Jesuss resurrection.

Stephanie Paulsells hope for those who read this book is that you will find here resources for developing a sustainable practice of honoring the body within the uniqueness of your own daily life. My hope for the readers of all the books in this series is the same. I urge you to find companions with whom to discuss, pray about, and live each Christian practice.

Dorothy C. Bass
Editor, Practices of Faith Series
November 2001
Valparaiso, Indiana