Why is the Theology of the Body important to you?

A friend asked me to write on this, and my first response was "heck yeah!," and my second response was..."oh no...that's a whole new book!"  There is so much in the Theology of the Body, and often it is so misunderstood.... Since I have written on this extensively (Theology of the Body, Extended: The Spiritual Gifts of Birth, Impairment, and Dying, The Gift of Birth: Discerning God's Presence in Childbirth, in the background (or foreground!) of many articles, and certainly a deep part of the current book I am writing, Why You Shouldn't Kill Yourself: Five Tricks of the Heart about Assisted Suicide), I think I will do the less wordy thing and go for bullet points instead.

But first, a little candor: I am also a theologian, and part of my "stealth mission" is to introduce John Paul II's anthropology and the potential within it to a wider academic audience. The Theology of the Body is more appreciated in ecclesial circles than some academic circles.  Mind you, good people can disagree on the value of a given argument (get a Thomist and Augustinian in a room and watch them go), but I honestly hold that most of the people who tell me they don't like the Theology of the Body haven't read it, or have encountered some twisted stereotype of it that has badly informed their reading.  We need to be clear what the audiences are about: that God created human beings male and female as a form of incarnational revelation, a sign that we best perceive in relationship that points to our destined relationship to God. The Fall skewed our ability to see and live out this sign, but it remains the reason why humanity was created--and we can see it, with God's help. The audiences are rich (and occasionally difficult), but truly the tip of the iceberg.  We live in a world that is desperately asking what it means to be human any more.  There is wisdom here to answer that question.  So the Theology of the Body is important to me, but I think it could be important to everyone, academic or not.

OK, a few bullet points about the importance of the Theology of the Body (or ToB):

• Revelation and sacramentality.  So many efforts theologically to recover a thick sacramentality of the human being...and John Paul II's is one of the very best.  The idea that before there even existed the scriptures, there existed the human body--this is a radical notion that changes the way we see and treat the body, not as a machine or vessel or functionary, but as the visible sign of God's revelation in the world.  Many Christians want to say the body is important.  John Paul II's work reminds us why.  p.s. I find it very interesting that many of my Protestant friends and colleagues in Theology (I went to an ecumenical divinity school) are deeply and favorably intrigued by this notion.  It could be a point of ecumenical dialogue....
• John Paul II's gift to spiritual direction.  I am trained as a spiritual director, and so much spiritual direction is informed by the groundbreaking work of Ignatius of Loyola, the saint who founded the Jesuits and famously proclaimed that we must learn to see God in all things.  The Theology of the Body is about seeing as well, precisely, it is about perception of the divine in human bodies and their relationships.  There are so many insights in ToB that work brilliantly with spiritual direction: the meaning of shame, fear, self-giving, receiving, God in the everyday, vocation, avocation, discernment of spirits, the work of the Holy Spirit.... OK, I'll admit, it's probably the next book!
• It lends itself to a theology of childbirth.  You guys.  Women make up half the human race and we basically have no theology of childbirth.  How did that happen?  I won't "go there" right now, but although John Paul doesn't say much about childbirth, he opens the door to it and all the possibilities are right there.  If the man and woman are created and told to be fruitful and multiply, and the body exists as sign, then doesn't childbirth serve as an extension of the sign of marriage?  Might it be a form of revelation?  Is that why many women name it one of the most spiritual moments of their lives?
• It helps us learn how to give our dying bodies to God in love.  That is, it teaches us how to die.  Many refer to the law of the gift or the hermeneutic of the gift as the dynamic heart of the Theology of the Body--and there is another word for it, usually applied to Jesus Christ's death on the cross.  That word is kenosis, or "self-emptying."  It is a rich and loaded theological term, but most importantly here, it teaches us how to die.  Death is a consequence of original sin.  But with Christ's redemption, we can approach death as he did--an emptying of the self into the arms of God the Father, a gift originally received and offered back to God.  We simply don't know how to die in our culture--look at the 17 states considering passing laws on physician assisted suicide right now--and John Paul's insights give us a new art of dying (ars moriendi). 
• We are not trapped souls.  We are, each of us, a unity of body and soul.  ToB speaks to this is clear ways, undercutting the gnostic tendencies that still reside in Christianity and the wider culture.  Gnosticism is an ancient heresy that (among other things) held the human being was a good soul trapped in an evil body, just waiting for the release of death.  Well, ToB says clearly we are both spiritual and bodily, and these realities are not opposites.  It is a freeing teaching when absorbed, and brings a lens to what it means to be human that is not what our culture typically holds.  ToB, in this regard, is a medicine to our culture.

There are many other things I could mention (understandings of marriage and sexuality, for example), but I wanted to go with some of the lesser known reasons I think ToB is important, the ones that I think need further exploration.  

ToB is important, more important than some people know.  I encourage you to read it with an open mind and discover for yourself.  I'm here to talk about it anytime.

--Susan Windley-Daoust

*****

This will be a a separate post later, but indeed, The Gift of Birth is now out and available for purchase!  This is a more "popular" treatment of the sign of childbirth for any one who has given birth, plans to give birth, or is working with one giving birth.  Lots of ToB, quite a bit of Ignatian spirituality, and many women reflecting on the spiritual nature of their varied experiences giving birth.  Please feel free to share the news!  Available at Amazon in hardcover and softcover, as well as ebook, and at Gracewatch Media in hard and softcover editions.

An open letter to Anne Lamott

Dear Anne,

I hope you don't mind that I call you Anne.  It's your Christian name, and you may call me by mine: Susan. I'm writing this publicly in part because I have no idea how to get your address.  I guess your story has been so public I feel I can address you publicly as well.  But also because even though I am addressing you, in a sense, I am addressing many.

Anne, I have heard you say that even though you call yourself a foot washing revival tent born-again Christian, and have written numerous memoirs and essays about walking the Christian life, you don't feel especially accepted in those evangelical circles because of your background and politics.  Well, I'll be straight up: I'm Catholic and sometimes I feel the same way, mostly because I reject both political parties and am as close to a pacifist as a person can get.  I'm happy to be Catholic, devoutly Catholic, and by the way, a big Pope Francis fan-girl (I bet you are too): but I know the feeling getting labeled "outsider."  So I write this to you hoping we can eschew labels for a few minutes and recognize each other as one friend of Jesus Christ to another.

I have read your essay "At Death's Window" many times over the years, where you write out how you came to help in the assisted suicide of a long time friend and cancer sufferer named "Mel," at his request.  I can understand wanting to help a friend who is suffering.  I hope every Christian, indeed every human can understand that.  It is certainly the way of Jesus, who never turned away a person who cried for help.  But every time I read it, I stumble straight out of the shoot when you say:

He and his wife still loved each other very much, but he'd lost the ability to do the things he had most loved to share during their 30 years together: to cook and overeat, hike and travel. He had always been passionately literary, but he was losing the ability to read and write, which had defined his life. Both elegant and down-to-earth, with lifelong depression and a rich, crabby sense of humor, he was 60 when he was diagnosed with cancer. ...

Everyone recommended that he contact a hospice provider to help with pain management, but this was not his way. He said that if it was just his body deserting him, maybe. But his mind? His ideas? His self?

The essay goes on multiple times to say Mel would no longer soon be himself.  And that prospect pained you and perhaps terrified him.  So you offer to help him "end life on his own terms."

Here's what I wonder, with sadness.  What would have happened had Mel continued to live until his natural death?  OK, let's get it out there: let's assume given the nature of his disease he would have been mentally absent at the end, and yes, that would have been terribly hard, maybe the hardest reality of his life.  He would have needed the constant care of others for feeding, toileting, bathing, and medication for comfort.  24 hour care.  Yes.

But this man, who you say dealt with lifelong depression--and a symptom of that is an inability to feel loved--would have had love lavished on him in the most concrete ways.  I know you would have done this, Anne, and it sounds like his wife and other friends would have rallied as well.  Maybe, mental constructs frayed, he would have felt loved in a way he couldn't before.  If people responded by saying "I love you and will help you live and die as well as possible, because no matter what happens, you are so much more than your mind, your ideas, your 'self'?  Your goodness is not qualified by what you can do...."  What would have happened?  Another symptom of depression is constant questioning whether your life has meaning.  What would have happened if people said and did the hard thing: I will stand by you throughout this passage because you are you, you have meaning to me and to God, no matter what this disease does to your body?  Would something have clicked?  Would it have been a witness, a pointing to our dependance on the goodness of God?  The thing is, with assisted suicide, you'll never know.  And although I do not think you consciously meant it this way, what does it say to agree with a person that your life is what you can do, to the point of ending it when you're not as productive anymore?  There are all kinds of examples throughout history of people deciding for others that they no longer meet the mark of usefulness, and end their lives.

Now, this is where you say, Anne, "But he requested this.  This was his free choice."  And you're right, that's true.  We all have free choices.  (Hey, don't argue free will with a Catholic--we're all for it!)  But the choices have consequences.  I'm not going to say he knowingly committed an ultimate rejection of God in choosing to end his life before its time, because I cannot know whether he fully understood what he was doing there.   Who knows?--not me, certainly, only God.  But choosing to end his life through assisted suicide had consequences: who knows what possibilities (and yes, life still has rich possibilities even on your deathbed) were closed off through this act?  Who knows what love was unexpressed?  The death scene you describe sounds relatively idyllic, but I read it and thought--where are their adult children?  Or other friends who may have thought there were months to live, to connect?  To put it as directly as I dare: an experience of Jesus Christ changed both of our lives, Anne.  He gave us meaning and hope in some very, very dark times.  How do we know that Mel wouldn't have been given that grace as well?

At one point in the essay, you say you were sure that God would be with him and all of you no matter how this shook down.  I'm sure of that too, because God never abandons us.  God is kind of nutty in love with us that way: that's the cross for you.  But we need to choose to live our lives--and honor others' lives--in such a way that opens US to God's love for us, and trusts God can work in some flat out lousy and hard circumstances.  I'm recalling two other lines from different books you have written: one is "God loves us exactly where we are, and God loves us too much leave us in that place" (that's a paraphrase, sorry), and the culminating line of your conversion, after sensing Jesus' presence for days: "Alright, $%& it.  You can come in." (Yes, its a family friendly blog).  When someone close to me is suffering or dying, I would invite (in fact, beg) Jesus to "come in."  I would remind him that he has said he loves us too much to leave us in this awful place and act, do something, help us see where he is in this, help my dying friend have courage and peace. 

Why am I writing?  Honestly, Anne, I want you to see that dying is hard but it can also be a place where God is especially present, the veil lifted.  I do want you to see that ending another's life is wrong, not because I'm a rule freak and lacking in compassion, but because we need to trust Jesus and let him be in control.  Jesus Christ IS our compassion, and he will manifest it for us and through us if he let him come in, and take our sticky hands off the wheel (I think that is one of your lines too).  Assisting someone's suicide is seeking a control over life and death that belongs to God.  And for all of you who agree with Anne, who take the movie Million Dollar Baby as your moral guide, please: this is for you as well.  Just put your name in Anne's spot.

Finally, Anne, I'm not sure if Mel's final gift to you (the framed picture of Lincoln before he was shot, the deep sorrow and compassion in his eyes) haunts you.  It haunts me.  Please, think about it.  And you may hate me for writing this public letter, or not. I hope not.  But you can contact me if you wish (my email is pretty easy, it's on the sidebar), and I promise I would keep any communication confidential from here on out.

As a Catholic, we honor November as the month where we pray for the dead.  I will pray for Mel.  I will also pray for you.  Perhaps you can pray for me as well.  We are family.

Peace and all good,
Susan Windley-Daoust