Temples of Clay

When I was in Seminary, I attended a worship service in which a woman who was both a liturgical dancer and local potter performed a dance for us. In this dance she balanced in her hand a beautiful clay globe. As she danced, we marveled at its shape, color and beauty. She moved among us, and held the ball out to each of us as if in offering. Then at one point she turned, twisted down and let the globe roll out of her hand onto the floor. Immediately as it rolled forward it shattered into several pieces of unfired clay. We all gasped. What had seemed so solid and firmly formed was revealed to be a fragile, breakable ball of earth.

I was struck in how in her dance, she exhibited such grace and strength, and when the globe shattered I realized how amazingly fragile our lives are as well. Paul says in his Second Letter to the Corinthians, “we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.” Our bodies are fragile and subject to all the vicissitudes and vagaries of physical existence: we are weakened by hunger, disease, advancing age, injuries or biochemical imbalances. There are many things we wish to do, or are committed in our hearts to do, but our physical bodies render us unable of accomplishing. As Jesus says to his disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane, “the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

And yet at the same time, in another letter, Paul proclaims, “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?” (1 Corinthians 6:19). It is in these very earthen fleshly vessels that God resides as the Holy Spirit. We may perceive ourselves as being weak and undependable vessels to contain such a rich gift as the Holy Spirit, but God does not seem to share our qualms and misgivings. It is, after all, our very earthen physicalness in which God chose to incarnate in Jesus Christ. The early Church wrestled with this issue of the physical humanity of Jesus, but in the 4^th Century finally proclaimed that Jesus was fully human and fully divine, two complete natures joined in one being.

When Paul talks about our bodies being temples of the Holy Spirit, he is intimating that there is something similar that happens to us. We have a treasure within us – the presence of the Holy spirit. But this Holy Spirit has to communicate with us utilizing the very physical processes associated with human thought and consciousness. In my online article associated with the Journey to the Heart of God sermon series, I discuss some of the neurophysiological correlates to human consciousness and spiritual practice. I say “correlates” deliberately. Unlike reductionistic materialistic explanations of human religious and spiritual experience, I do not believe that all human mental activity can simply be reduced to neurochemical interactions at the neurological level. I do not believe that the mind is simply a product of physical processes. Rather, I believe that mind and thought is mediated and expressed physically, but that mind has its own dynamic existence. Mario Beauregard and Denyse O’Leary make this argument, over against strictly materialistic interpretations of neurophysiology, in their book, The Spiritual Brain:

A Neuroscientist's Case for the Existence of the Soul. They offer “compelling evidence that religious experiences have a nonmaterial origin, making a convincing case for what many in scientific fields are loath to consider—that it is God who creates our spiritual experiences, not the brain.”

Our mental processes, however, are dependent upon the very physical construction of our brains and nervous system. We are, indeed, earthen vessels, and so our spiritual, intellectual and moral lives are influenced and directly affected by the functioning of our neurophysiology. It is because of this very neurophysiology that the church over the millennia has developed various spiritual practices that are specifically designed to train or repattern the mind’s consciousness by affecting changes in the actual neural pathways of the brain. These practices accomplish this by establishing new neural connections and pathways through disciplined practices such as meditation, prayer, contemplation, acts of charity, asceticism, moral restrictions on behavior, table fellowship and works of mercy and justice.

 

Each of these activities works with the natural functioning of the brain, with how it is that the brain is designed to receive sensory input, to process intellectual content, make emotional connections, respond to the environment and immediate situations, and perceive relationships between the individual self and the world outside.

The main point of all of this is that spirituality is actually a holistic endeavor that engages the whole person. I have discussed this in the January 23^rd Journey to the Heart of God webpage under the subject of “Holistic Religion.” Today’s blog emphasizes the actual physical components of that holistic practice. This Sunday’s Journey to the Heart of God webpage looks closely at the neurophysiology of the mind and spirituality, and provides several links to articles that discuss what is commonly called “neurotheology.”

Image sources: Sacred dancer from http://danceadvantage.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/addeum4.jpg?w=300;   left brain/right brain form http://kcbrownstone.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/left_right_brain_xp.jpg;   rainbow brain from http://www.brainline.org/images/uploads/orig/2009/00320.jpg;