Body Worlds 3

For those of you that missed it, here's what I said at the Body World's Exhibit. It was a fun evening (complete with presents from Science World!). All in all a good experience, and I recommend that the non-squeamish go and check it out. It is quite thought provoking.


Science World: Body Worlds Exhibit November 4, 2006

How does your faith view the body after death?

I must confess that it feels a little funny standing up here trying to articulate a Christian answer to the question at hand. How does your faith view the body after death? I come from a denomination within Christianity that has many jokes and quips crafted about it. One of which is that wherever you find two Baptists, you will find three opinions. Well, the same could be said about Christianity as a whole, which I believe is a strength and not a weakness. The umbrella of Christianity can tolerate a wide diversity of opinions and articulations about a good many questions, including that of the body.

In many ways the question of what we believe about the body after death comes down to what we believe about the body in life. The unavoidable fact and reality of death leads us to reflection on the nature of life, our own humanity and questions about the great mystery that will await us after we leave our present understanding of existence.
Christianity has within it competing tensions over the material world including how we relate to our bodies during life and death. On one hand, we as Christians have had a tendency to devalue the body. To associate the body and the material world with sin and death. This has especially been the case in regards to women’s bodies. In reading the story of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, which has been labeled the fall, there has been the impulse in Christianity to develop theologies that link Eve as a representative of womankind with the bringing of sin and death into the world. And so for some articulations of Christianity, the leaving behind of one’s body through death is a blessed event. It can usher us into a new reality that frees us from the limitations of our bodies and joins us with the creator and Jesus.

And yet, to reduce Christianity to this perspective is to do a disservice to the complexity of the whole. Because even as Christianity has the tendency to devalue the body, we also tend to be adamant about the sacredness of the body. We say: the body is a temple, the body is a part of God’s good creation, our bodies act as God’s body on earth. We even have as our central figure, a person who is meant to be God clothed in human flesh. And we remember this enfleshing of the divine weekly or monthly in our communities. And so despite what we may say to the contrary, the material world, matter matters in Christianity.

The importance of matter also asserts itself when Christians think of the body after death. In our scriptures, Jesus and the apostle Paul talk about a time in the future where our bodies will be resurrected. Now the nature of this resurrection is up for debate, from literal interpretations to metaphorical ones. Personally, I find what the idea suggests far more exciting than any connection it could have with reality. The idea that our bodies might be resurrected suggests that who we are as an entity on this planet is not separate from our physical self. We are not just spirit, soul and mind, but we are also our bodies.

In 2006 I had what I like to refer to as a thematic year of death. The year started with the death of a beloved pet. A beautiful Rottweiler named Kona. For those of you who have never been in love with an animal, it will be hard for you to understand how much of an impact that kind of loss can have. But Kona served as preparation for an even larger loss that was to come a few months later – the death of my grandmother.

When my grandmother died, she was a matriarch of a diverse Christian community. As the community walked along side our family, they leaned on various Christian theologies to help them cope. There were, of course, the usual platitudes about my grandmother having gone on to a better place, and I know these were meant to be helpful. And yet, they did not touch the enormity of my grief. I could comprehend that her spirit and personality lived on in some way, somewhere, but a large part of me was grieving the loss of her body. And I needed ways to honour her body and mark the physical loss.

In this situation, for this Christian woman, my mother and her sisters dressed and prepared her body in the hours after her death, and then those of us who wanted, came and kissed her cold flesh goodbye. My grandmother was cremated and now lives in a beautiful urn in my grandfather’s bedroom.

But it wasn’t so long ago that the act of cremation would have been seen as an overtly anti-Christian statement. It would have meant denying belief in bodily resurrection. When corpses were dissected during the Renaissance, there were outcries about the violation of the body, and yet the tendency in Christianity which allows for the devaluation of the body enabled the development of western anatomy and medicine.

I came to see the Body World’s exhibit with a friend from my theological studies. One of the first things that I saw was a quote from the Psalms, “What are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?” As it was intended, this put me in a reflective state of mind.

As we wandered about the exhibit, we shared the crowded room with people who found the whole thing creepy, medical students who seemed to have disassociated themselves from wonder and were labeling body parts, teens who ran around with loud and mildly obnoxious comments, and others who just gazed in silence. There are those within the Christian community who object to these bodies put on display in part because of the potential for the bodies to be disrespected and not treated with the sacredness which they deserve. And yet, as I looked about the room, I saw people not unlike those I would see on a Sunday morning in church. People with a mixture of motivations and responses. You know, humans wandering around in their bodies.

Whether or not the Body World’s exhibit encourages us to wonder about the sacredness of the body is all in the eye of the beholder. For in Christianity as a whole, there is no right answer to that question. But for me, wandering amongst these former living, breathing ensouled human beings, took me to a place of wonder and mystery.

Concluding Statement:

A large part of my academic and personal work has centred around the relationship between culture and Christianity. Now, there are those who would like to tell you that religion, in my case Christianity stands outside of culture and offers helpful correctives, if only those darn secular people would listen to us. Now, I’m going to make a claim to truth, which is something as a postmodern that I generally shy away from, but here it goes. The truth is that culture and religion have always influenced one another, shaped one another, shifted one another. Sometimes with disastrous results, and sometimes with positive ones. My challenge to Christianity is to listen and learn from the passions and questions of the culture that surrounds us.

When I look at the popularity of the Body Worlds exhibit, I hear a call to rediscover the traditions and theologies within Christianity that embrace the material world. That celebrate our bodies. That help us to live in a way which is not disassociated from our flesh. This includes learning to live within the limits of our bodies and this fragile but glorious earth.

Wow... am I a bad blogger or what?!

After a long stint away doing whatever in the heck I have been doing in the last month, I have finally returned to this neglected blog to update it for the one or two of you out there in cyberspace that actually take the time to see if I've written anything. Sorry.

Thesis hell is over, I've graduated with my MA and am now a working slob. Although I try to keep from being too slovenly as I still want to retain the title of "Canada's Sexiest Theologian." I even wear fishnets as I attempt to recruit students to this wonderful theological school... I won't tell you the other tricks I use to try and up the amount of straight guys at this place ;)

In other news, I will be making a public apperance on November 4th at Science World as a part of an interfaith pannel discussion about the Body Worlds Exhibits. Come to see my answer to the pressing question... what does a sexy theologian wear to an event surrounded by de-fleshed bodies?

Thesis Hell

I am choosing right now, at this moment, to update my blog all in an effort to avoid writing my thesis. I'm actually avoiding the threatening glare of a blank page on the computer screen. I've come to the realization that the real honour in completing a thesis is not the idea or the research, but just getting the f-ing thing written. Which it will be... soonish. But not if I keep boondoggling. So back I go... all this is to say, I will write more later. Just promise me one thing, if anyone is reading... please, for the love of God, do not ask me about my thesis.

I have been met with a proposal of sorts. It comes to me in the form of a question/comment made in response to my reincarnation blog entry. My fellow Pilgrim playfully asks me to elaborate on some sort of understanding of incarnation, doctrinal or otherwise... what to do, what to say. Some may assume that summarizing or articulating a position on incarnation, given my lack of orthodoxy, would be a rather difficult or daunting task. Au contraire! Letting go of orthodoxy and the need to be right has provided me considerable freedom to play with various and conflicting notions of all sorts of sacred cows including the concept of incarnation.

It is my firm belief that words do not have a meaning; they have multiple meanings, layered with shades of grey. But, you may retort, a dog is a dog is a dog and is not a cat. Perhaps, but as Lacan tells us, a dog is a dog only because we have as a society agreed to call it that. We could just as easily call it a cat. And which kind of dog are we referring to anyway? Furthermore, what if a cat was named dog? An old friend of mine once named her rabbit "stew." I know, I know, it boggles the modern mind that seeks for easy classification and static dictionaries, but I digress... back to incarnation.

Incarnation is an even trickier word than dog as it moves from the more concrete furry animal to something loaded with spiritual other-worldliness and sound moral reasoning. Incarnation has to mean Jesus, right, or else we pull a thread that unravels the whole. But perhaps, the emperor never had any clothes to begin with. Perhaps, incarnation is not bound to this sweater or that tunic. Perhaps, incarnation is something broader, more fluid.

I believe that we all can incarnate the divine in our own particularity. More importantly, in order to get a fuller image of the divine, we need the broader scope of humanity. This is because none of us alone can contain, sum up, or know the whole truth, the real God, the full incarnation. We only ever see in part, and this is a beautiful thing. There is beauty in knowing and accepting one's own limits. There is grace in being able to simply live as grime and glory embodied humans who sometimes incarnate something transcendent and sometimes do not.

The call is to strip off the clothing of a stable concept of truth/God/incarnation and enter naked into the fray of life. Heck, even the great biblical King David danced naked, and in public no less. Maybe we'll get a little cold on occasion, but we can learn to build fires and dance and huddle together (and no, I don't mean it that way... although...). All it takes is a little courage, imagination, and the understanding that meaning is not something delivered from on high, outside of ourselves, but meaning is something that is mediated, created in our relationships with one another and this world. For it is in and through relationships that incarnations happen.

Halloween is my favourite holiday of all. Better than Christmas, better than even my birthday. I know, I know, Christmas has all that cheer and family and presents, and my birthday is all about me, which I like, but there is just something about Halloween that I love. It's not just the candy (especially smarties and rockets). What I love the most about Halloween is the dressing up. Perhaps it is a hold over from my favourite childhood game when I would don the costume of a princess, or peasant, or whatever struck my fancy.

That was fun, but it is even more fun to dress up as an adult. An adult can add that extra edge of humour or wit into the costume. The costume can even provide an in-your-face type of mentality. One Halloween I crashed an All Saints Day party. There was apparently some resistance to celebrating with a more pagan and witchy type of name, so in response, I dressed as a martyred saint complete with a line of blood around my neck where my head had been cut off... perhaps my beheading resulted from protecting my virginity. Fortunately, good humour abounded and no one was offended (actually, I was a little disappointed by that fact).

This Halloween I dressed as a 1950's pin-up girl. It was only later that I read an article in the Globe and Mail about the slutty costumes and the rise of raunch in females as a kind of feminist backlash. Mea culpa. Oh well, I am after all, only human.

And now, I'm off in search of another excuse to dress up...

I am a believer in reincarnation. Now my particular brand of this belief has little to do with what happens to an animals, vegetables or minerals after they die, but rather what happens to a being (me in this case) throughout the course of their life. I have, in the course of my relatively brief time on this planet, already undergone a number of incarnations. I have been a missionary kid, a radical feminist, a touchy-feely artist, and an analytical scholar (to name a few). Fortunately, the freckles have remained consistent.

This last weekend, I had the chance to revisit one of my previous incarnations. I must admit to some trepidation as the weekend approached. I wasn't sure how my new incarnation as post-modern liberal would fit within the social context of my previous evangelical self, surrounded by the faces of those I had worked along side of seven years ago at a Young Life camp. But I needn't have worried. With alcohol as social lubricant, I learned a little lesson about Karma.

As surprising as it may seem, I am far from perfect. I didn't have everything right or together seven years ago, and I would hazard a guess that the same situation persists in this present moment. Thank God for that, perfection is an unbearable weight. But the karma of this weekend lay not in right ideology and action, but in authenticity and engagement. As I slowly learn not to devalue my past, I see that the genuine friendships of the past continue in their heartfelt authenticity, that there is a continuity in character despite ideological shifts, that past life experiences are a gift, but most of all, that beer and wine are fabulous stimulants for great theological discussions.

I've been meditating on the idea of family and tradition lately. Perhaps this is because I have been awash in familial events and duties over the last few weeks. My brother and sister-in-law have left on an extended excursion into parts south of the 49th parallel, and my sister is moving into the vast other that defines itself as the centre of all that is reasonable and Canadian, Toronto.

No one can hold the threads of your story like a sibling can. My brother and sister share with me many of the most basic elements that have given shape to my experience of the world, specifically parents and geography. They alone share the cornucopia of land and sea that formed our knowledge of the world at a young age, and yet each of us grew into that shifting landscape in different ways, establishing alternative visions of home and later attaching our hearts to divergent patches of land as our lives have taken us away from one another.

Now, at thirty, I am faced with the prospect of having no siblings within the same strip of geography, and the transition weighs heavy on me. The growth is good for all of us, and yet even with the best of choices, there is a loss, a letting go. I find myself longing for some sort of ritual or tradition to mark the release. A hug at the car or airport does not hold the symbolic weight I crave, and yet, perhaps, the simple act of an embrace is ritual enough. I guess it is all in the intentionality.

So Bon Voyage, Via con Dios, and so on. I'll miss you, and I am looking forward to the stories.