We are two things, intertwined: spiritual and physical. For a long time, most of my adult life, I have been observing a world full of people who embraced the physical and denied the spiritual. They have forgotten that "Man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD" (Deut 8:3). If they understood their spiritual hunger and how to satisfy it, then they would be in right relationship with that half of themselves. If they understood their physical engorgement, and how they were communicating to themselves a self-loathing by being so gluttonous, then they would be in right relationship with that half of themselves. So why were they doing this to themselves? Starving one half, engorging the other?
I was naturally drawn to all things mystic and divine; I loved God and God experiences. In fact, I so de-emphasized the physical that it created for me this sense of floating inside myself. As if I inhabited my body, but my spirit wanted out so much that it had rammed itself into the top two inches of my head, looking for a way out. This left me feeling like I wasn't grounded; like I was barely here. I lived for spiritual experience, and revered truth as a path to it. Jesus was not just someone I learned about in Church. He was more real to me than the rest of the planet, and I resented being stuck here waiting. Waiting to grow up. Waiting to grow old. Waiting to die. Then, and only then, could I be united with the divine and forever live in spiritual ecstasy. And so I was impatient. Why did it have to take so long?
But, recently, through the gift of grace, I was surprised to learn I was in as much of a fix as the rest of the planet. Yes, I was not one of the people who deny the spiritual, causing a destructive relationship with the physical. But why did I think I was so righteous in comparison, when I had the same problem as them, only the opposite? Favoring the spiritual so much that I was starving myself physically? Who was I to call the physical realm a curse, and my own body a curse, when it was a blessing to be cherished, a gift from God? What was I, anyway, a Gnostic?
So I began to explore how we can be in balance with ourselves. How to love both sides equally, how to feed them both what they needed. What, exactly, was the food that satisfies? "Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and you will delight in the richest of fare" (Isaiah 55:2).
I was naturally drawn to all things mystic and divine; I loved God and God experiences. In fact, I so de-emphasized the physical that it created for me this sense of floating inside myself. As if I inhabited my body, but my spirit wanted out so much that it had rammed itself into the top two inches of my head, looking for a way out. This left me feeling like I wasn't grounded; like I was barely here. I lived for spiritual experience, and revered truth as a path to it. Jesus was not just someone I learned about in Church. He was more real to me than the rest of the planet, and I resented being stuck here waiting. Waiting to grow up. Waiting to grow old. Waiting to die. Then, and only then, could I be united with the divine and forever live in spiritual ecstasy. And so I was impatient. Why did it have to take so long?
But, recently, through the gift of grace, I was surprised to learn I was in as much of a fix as the rest of the planet. Yes, I was not one of the people who deny the spiritual, causing a destructive relationship with the physical. But why did I think I was so righteous in comparison, when I had the same problem as them, only the opposite? Favoring the spiritual so much that I was starving myself physically? Who was I to call the physical realm a curse, and my own body a curse, when it was a blessing to be cherished, a gift from God? What was I, anyway, a Gnostic?
So I began to explore how we can be in balance with ourselves. How to love both sides equally, how to feed them both what they needed. What, exactly, was the food that satisfies? "Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and you will delight in the richest of fare" (Isaiah 55:2).
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