In the readings for this week, the “body” and the “spirit” are mentioned multiple times. What a juxtaposition! In mainstream Western culture, we idolize the body. How we look, how much we weigh, how we feel, (or at least how we are supposed to feel according to our wearable devices,) all lead us to obsess further over our own skins. We judge others through a similar lens too. We cannot help it. Thank God that we are not merely our bodies.
I remember when my grandfather died. My sister and I sat on his hospital bed and held his hand as he passed from this life to the next. With a handful of family members sitting around his frail body, we laughed and cried as intermittent waves of grief and fits of laughter passed through us while we shared our memories. When he finally passed, I saw and felt his last breath. I was flooded with grief at the finality of it all. But there was something else. I felt a sense of amazement and a welcome relief. This was because when I looked at him, I almost did not recognize him. He was no longer my grandfather. He was not “he” anymore. The spirit had left his body and for me it was a beautiful and welcome assurance.
Human beings are both particle and wave. Can anyone say that love is not real because it has no measurable mass or energy level? Does that make it any less real? Our bodies have mass, but according to Jesus (John: 6:63), they do not account. What accounts is what is in our hearts. Those feelings, that love, and what we believe; that is all "wave." As human beings we feel that which has no mass because we are touched by spirit all the same.
In the power of the Spirit, Jesus proclaimed, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind.” This week, as I helped convene a conference for hundreds of people with disabilities in Mwanza, Tanzania, I realized something: this scripture is not about the blind. People with disabilities know better than anyone else that they are NOT their bodies. I realized, in fact, that I am the blind person that Jesus is referring to. And it is only through finding my compassion, again, and again, and again, (because I constantly forget), that I am ever able to see.
Photo of Maryknoll Missioner Kyle Johnson at the Pamoja Conference in Mwanza, Tanzania, courtesy of author.