CHAPTER 1

Believing Bodies

I am running out of shelf space for books in my little apartment and as Ipuzzled recently about which to keep I went into a reverie about the tinycollection of books we had at a home when I was a child. My parents were avidusers of the public library, but owned only a couple of dozen books. I devouredthem all from cover to cover. A self-help manual from the 1940s called Relieffrom Nervous Tension particularly fascinated me, since I felt tense and nervousa lot of the time. So at the age of ten I pored over it, laboring to understandthe concept of neurosis and puzzling over the scenarios the author presented.One particular story made a deep impression. A patient who complained of chronicallergies entered his therapist's office only to be confronted by a huge bouquetof flowers on the desk. Immediately starting to wheeze and choke, the patientrailed at the therapist for recklessly exposing him to such an irritant. Withouta word, the therapist started to tear the flowers up. They were artificial paperflowers and entirely harmless.

Ever since, I have been fascinated by the power of the identities we create forourselves. Who we think we are can dictate how the very cells of our bodies aregoing to react to the environment. The choking patient's body was obedientlyacting out his identity in the "allergic" reaction to what he assumed were realflowers, though in fact they were made of paper. Researchers have discoveredthat in patients suffering from multiple personality disorder, one of thepersonalities can be allergic to something while the other "self" isn't at all.One personality can be short-sighted and the other long-sighted, and the patientneeds glasses with completely different prescriptions as she shifts from oneidentity to another.

Investigation into the ways our ideas get embedded into the very cellularstructure of our bodies should be of paramount interest to thoughtfulChristians. Our commitment to the mystery of Incarnation should make usespecially alert to every source of insight about the way our beliefs affect usphysically. All sorts of avenues should be explored more openly in our Christianpractice as we build a richer understanding of what healing is.

Meditation and prayer are powerful ways of letting go of old identities andexploring new ones in Christ, and our bodies can register this change in ahundred ways, from the expression in our eyes to the ways we let go of stress.And transformation occurs through a flow in the other direction, too. We canallow our bodies to experience change first, and then a new sense of self canfollow.

For example, there are many ways of exposing ourselves to deep healing of heart,mind, and soul through our bodies, through touch and movement. So, for example,it is a fact that our bodies act as the long-term "storage" for painfulmemories. This is not some New Age claptrap, but ageless human knowledge whosefoundation is only now being investigated by science. Skilled body work—myexperience has been with the technique called Rolfing—can release the pain andemotion embedded in particular areas of my body, freeing me to mature. Yoga andother forms of movement can be the royal road to a profound shift in the way weknow and identify ourselves. I have been practicing mudras for some years,praying with a range of ancient gestures and postures for the arms and hands. Ican't explain how these strange and beautiful gestures help shift my energiesfrom petty obsessions, self-doubt, and negativity into a state of openness toGod's presence in the present moment. I just know they do, and that I ambenefiting from millennia of experimentation.

And what about the healing power of sacramental ritual? Our bodies can oftenoffer us ways to grow into radically new identities of faith when our minds seemstuck in skepticism. I remember hearing of a Marxist intellectual in Russia whowanted to believe but could not overcome his agnosticism. He consulted a wisepriest who strangely showed little interest in his visitor's intellectualdifficulties with Christianity. The priest told him to go home and get into thehabit of making the sign of the cross and bowing to the ground a hundred times aday in the privacy of his own room, then come back to see him when he felt likeit. The man returned a month later and asked for baptism. First he practicedbelieving with his body, then his mind could catch up. There are thousands ofmen and women who find it hard to believe intellectually yet regularly take partin services in hospitable churches. Many are simply learning to believe withtheir bodies first. Through the rituals of worship the mental knots of theiragnosticism are gradually being worked loose, and their hearts are being freedlike a compass needle to align with the attraction of God.

CHAPTER 2

Cookham Churchyard

I will always remember a moment years ago, turning a corner in a stairwell ofthe Tate Gallery in London and confronting a painting by Sir Stanley Spencercalled Resurrection in Cookham Churchyard. This huge canvas depicts withglorious earthiness and apparent naiveté the opening of the graves in thepainter's local churchyard on the last day. The different generations buriedthere over the centuries are struggling up as if from long sleep and beginningto take stock of one another. In the middle there is a young man just emerging,looking to one side with a serene and serious expression—the artist's self-portrait.Back then, in the mid-sixties, the painting was regarded as dated andunfashionable and relegated to this relatively obscure place in a stairwell.There I stayed rooted on the stairs for over an hour, a...