Once again from "Let the Bones Dance" - Marcia W. Mount Shoop Christianity is a healing faith and our liturgy, music, and practices need to attend to bodies with more consistency and more depth. Redemption means we live in, and in hopes of, healing. The "already" gives way to the "not yet" when we practice what we preach. With intentional practices of compassion believers and the communities they inhabit will begin to see, feel, hear, and taste the good news in new ways. There is pain in human life; let the church be a space to express all that comes with that fact. Let the church be a space where redemption can find flesh in the power to be there and not be destroyed, in the power to suffer with indignation. Redeemed bodies accept that pain and suffering seep into the cells of our bodies. Again this is more than something about my body - it is about the body called the Church. In attending to bodies, the body of the church is introduced to new life - life that is vulnerable and available. Through our willingness to be with others in and through the pains of their lives the whole community is transformed. We cannot always be sure of what that transformation will be - and yet, we will be changed. Whenever we are pulled into the life of those who are broken and forgotten and waiting to be healed, we are also pulled into the journey of becoming more than who we thought we were. Compassion is a strange characteristic. We will always find that we are stretched and made aware of how full life can become for everyone. Compassion is a two-way experience. We each walk away healed and more whole as human beings. Maybe it is simply because compassion is at the very core of what it means to human. The truly human one is compassionate - not will be or could be - is compassionate. Sometimes it just take us a long time to live out of that core. Connection: We do not have to go far to see a world in need of others - those who will connect and care and heal. Just take a look around you as you wander through this day. Gather us as one, O God, and send us out into this day with your healing power among us so that as we encounter the pains of others we may see in then our own pains and then move to be with them - compassionate companions. Amen. |
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