Tuesday, April 13, 2010

(ramblings)

"Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît pas"--and the body, too, has its reasons that reason knows not.

We talk about "listening to your heart" and "following your dreams", but when do we talk about listening to our bodies? We try to dominate them instead: to squeeze them into the shapes we think they should have, to work them till they rebel against our mastery, to feed them only what the researchers mandate, to dress them according to the dictates of fashion.

"Have you heard the word / of my body?" asks the girl in Spring Awakening to the boy who breaks her. But I ought to be asking myself that question. Have I heard the word of my own body? If I don't listen, I will be the one at fault when my body breaks and my soul spills out.

And yet I press on, demanding more and more, unable to understand why I am suffering.

Knowing how to take care of other people, that's easy, compared to knowing how to take care of myself.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yeah. This really resonated with me Jen. We touched on this a bit in prayer group...it gets rather confusing, how much to pay attention to your body. On one hand, there is discipline, fasting, etc.; on the other hand, we, along with our bodies, were made in the image of God.
Love you!