My Aunt’s Blessing
About 35 years ago, I recall a night of walking on a dirt road in rural North Dakota. It was after dinner and sunset was still about two hours away. Lightning bugs were just waking up, but thankfully the mosquitos were not aware of the time. My aunt had given me a golden invitation: a chance to join her in some exercise. I recall my delight as this also meant walking with her two dogs, Darwin and Sydney, to town. I loved those dogs and would have walked to Seattle and back if it meant holding their leash.
As we walked, my aunt carefully shared a memory with me. She recalled that years ago, a family member had made comments about her body and those words had hurt her. She wanted me to know that my body was beautiful, just the way it was, and did not ever need to change. I don’t recall anything else about that walk or even our visit together. I do recall thinking about how anyone could say anything like this about my beautiful aunt and tucking it away inside myself to ruminate about later.
That moment has carried with me for years. The relationship of words and bodies remains something I think about.
Who has spoken words over your body?
What words were used to bless?
What words were used to hurt?
We are in an election cycle in which words and bodies are constantly being used. The weight of a leader’s words can impact countless bodies. How some bodies are valued over others. Whose body is beautiful and whose is alien. Whose bodies are to be cared for and whose need to find their own resources for care.
Our perceptions of the body’s worth, with roots from our nation’s history of slavery and the selling of bodies, is embedded in our DNA. It did not end in 1863 with the Emancipation Proclamation or with recent land acknowledgements of stolen land. It did not end with robust conversations in the pandemic about essential workers or the relentless murders of Black, Indigenous, and people of color, Sonia Massey being the most recent.
We continue to feel this pain, this discrepancy of our value versus the cost of our lives, in our bodies and in our relationships with others. And it's communicated in the words we hear this election. What generation should we listen to because they have the largest amounts of votes?
We see it in our communities as resources are deployed for the benefit of some bodies, but not others. It was at the Olympics where the value of a body was related to a number and not belovedness. It translates now to overwork, insurmountable anxiety and vocational burnout. Folks describe their fear of being replaceable, disposable, or not of worth.
I hear it when people qualify what they should or shouldn’t eat as having earned the privilege.
When do you hear words raised about bodies and their worth?
What words do you say to your own body each day about your worth?
Recently, a poem spoke words that held a different blessing:
This body, is a temple
with sacred novels and Holy Scriptures etched into our bones
built to hold more passion than a human being can fathomYou were made for glory, the human epitome of a light
a spirit so vast, that it had to be contained behind flesh
to tone down the brillianceThis body is glitter
and yet, we wake up,
tell our bodies before they even start breathing that they are wrong
that each day they have failed
at their chance of being something worth holdingThese bodies have done us nothing but good
they have loved us through every skipped meal,
cried tears for every time we compared them to another,
wrapped their arms around us when everything else felt distant…This body is mine, This body is beautiful
2018, Arielle Estoria, This body is mine
As we move into both this season of stewardship and the election cycle, I invite you to consider the relationship between the words we speak and how we view the gift of our bodies. How may you invite release of words that hurt and embrace those that have blessed? How may we give of ourselves, in the form of language, to join God in the healing and repair a broken world?
