"God is Spirit, or Self-Knowingness; God is Law and action; God is result or Body."** ~Ernest Holmes, The Science of Mind
Here's a sentence I never expected to type: your body is a theological statement.
Not a mistake. Not an inconvenience you're dragging around while the "real" spiritual you does the important work somewhere up in the clouds. Holmes puts Body right there in the same breath as Spirit and Law — not underneath them, not despite them. The body is where the invisible becomes visible. It's God, showing up with a face and a heartbeat and — let's be honest — some genuinely strange noises.
I grew up with a mother and older sister who believed if you weren't thin, you weren't happy. I am sure my sister learned this from my mom, and my mom probably was taught this jewel by her mom. A couple of real memories: hugging my sister hello and her whispering in my ear, "you should really lose at least ten pounds"; or from my mother, "I always know when you're unhappy — you start wearing jeans to hide your weight." It is not easy to love your body when those you love demean you.
We are so practiced at being embarrassed by our own bodies. We apologize for stomachs that growl during meditation, for the wrinkle that showed up overnight, for the fact that grief made us cry in the church parking lot and someone saw. Somewhere along the way, we absorbed the idea that a "spiritual" person floats slightly above all that — untroubled, unbothered, un-embodied. It's a lovely idea. It's also nonsense.
Because here's the truth Science of Mind keeps handing back to us: we don't get to Truth by escaping the body. We get there by moving *through* it. "We shall never know peace until we embody it," Holmes writes — not think it, not theorize it. Embody it. That word is doing a lot of work. It means the Divine isn't allergic to your body. It moved in on purpose.
I'll be honest, I like my body when I am wearing a size eight versus a size twelve. Is that conditioning? Probably. And it's the truth. Am I ashamed of liking my body at a smaller size? No — the truth is, I feel healthier, I move more easily, and I have a lot less aches and pains. I'm comfortable in loving my body, and I am comfortable knowing everyone has a right to choose how they appear in the world. I love Lizzo. I love her confidence and her loving herself enough to be exactly who she is without letting an industry shame her into being something different.
None of this means every ache or limitation is secretly a blessing in disguise, or that we're supposed to grit our teeth and call our suffering holy. It means something gentler: that the body having needs, limits, sounds, and seasons is not evidence that something went wrong. It's evidence that something is alive. Shame has had a long, lucrative career convincing us otherwise — that the right body is quiet, controlled, and endlessly cooperative. Yours doesn't have to audition for that role.
We will stay whole — not despite having bodies, but because we finally stopped treating them like the secret we have to keep.
Blessings on your journey,
Rev. Gayle
Rev. Gayle
Before I became clean and sober, I didn't much like myself, which meant I wasn't really fond of other people either. I used to hang out with a group; we nicknamed ourselves the "fashion police." Not that we ever really handed out tickets and we were in constant judgment about what people were wearing. The thing I have learned about judgment is if you judge other people, they are certainly going to judge you. It is a reciprocal universe.
Last week I wrote about learning to inhabit my own body instead of just occupying it. What I didn't say is that the same lesson applies to every body I encounter — not just mine.
Here's the truth I don't love admitting: I have judged bodies that weren't mine. Not out loud, not even always consciously — but the thought crosses before I catch it. Too old. Too much. Not enough. We've all absorbed decades of messaging that tells us which bodies are acceptable and which ones need explaining. Diet culture, fatphobia, ageism, racism, colorism — they all whisper the same lie: your body is a problem to be solved.
I don't think that's an accident, and I don't think it's harmless. If the Divine chose to show up as physical form — if, as Ernest Holmes put it, humanity is the place where heaven and earth meet — then every time we treat a body as unacceptable, we're rejecting a little piece of God showing up in the world. If judgment is reciprocal, so is grace.
I have never felt so much love and support as I have experienced from the Light on the Mountains CSL community, especially after my Achilles tendon surgery. From being carried down to a canoe while in a non-weight bearing cast and then floating down Silver Creek like Cleopatra floating down the Nile. This community has opened its hearts and homes to me prior to, during and after my injury. It's how that Divine presence shows up for us. I love the quote, "Don't tell God you've got big problems, tell your problems you've got a big God." ~Unknown. That is what the Light on the Mountains community demonstrates time and time again.
Togetherness is not an abstract, spiritual idea. It is bodies — in pews, at tables, in hugs held a beat too long because someone needed it. You cannot be in community without being in a body, near other bodies. That's not a limitation of the spiritual life. That's the whole point of it. Spirit didn't choose the physical as a compromise. It chose the physical as the way to know itself at all — and it chose to do that in more than one body, so we could know each other, too.
So, this week, the invitation isn't just to inhabit your own body — it's to notice how you inhabit the space around other people's. Where do you make room? Where do you flinch, compare, or quietly withhold? What would it look like to greet the body in front of you — whatever shape, age, ability, or color it comes in — as the place where God also lives?
We say we want to build a world that works for everyone. That has to include everyone's body, exactly as it is today, not as it is once it changes to meet somebody else's standard.
Blessings on your journey,
Rev. Gayle
It took me a long time to be truly comfortable in my body. In fact, it is something I still work on.
I don't know about you, I treated my body like a tool. I come from the "no pain, no gain" era. The body wasn't something to be cherished, it was my own personal meat suit.
I pushed through exhaustion because rest felt like weakness. I ignored the ache in my shoulder for two years because stopping to tend it felt like an inconvenience to my schedule. I treated my body the way you'd treat a rental car — drive it hard, worry about the damage later, it's not really mine anyway. Looking back, that's an odd way to treat the one vessel I actually get to keep for this entire lifetime.
Yes, we are spiritual beings having a human experience. And we chose to be here in this dimension in this body. It is good to remember that this is the place where God lives as me.
Ernest Holmes says, "In humanity we seem to have that point where heaven and earth meet, a place where the spiritual and the physical meet. The intangible spiritual always becomes the tangible form. But in humans the spiritual retains its identity as spirit and mind, while at the same time being tangible as physical body." –Ernest Holmes, A New Design for Living
Read that again. Heaven and earth meet — not in a temple, not in a sunset, not in some far-off spiritual plane. In humanity. In this body. In your body, reading this right now. If that's true, then every time I've treated my body like an inconvenience, I've been treating the meeting place of heaven and earth like an inconvenience. That's a sobering thought, and also a freeing one — it means I don't have to go anywhere else to find the sacred. I'm standing in it. I am it.
A lot has happened over this past year for me to truly "feel" my body, not as a tool, more like a spiritual companion. I have been given the opportunity to truly understand there is no separation from my spiritual self and my human self — they are one and the same. True, eventually the physical form of me will lay off this old garment and don something new. And yet until then, it is important to love and respect this material form I have been graced to take care of.
This is the work of inhabiting — not just occupying. There's a difference between living in a house and inhabiting a home. Occupying is passive; you're just there. Inhabiting is active — you tend it, you notice it, you make it yours on purpose. For most of my life I occupied my body. I showed up in it. I didn't inhabit it. I didn't know its rooms. I didn't know what it needed to feel like home.
I recently spent an hour and a half having an Ayurvedic Bliss Massage. I used to be that person who thought the only massage worth having was a deep tissue
massage. I am sure they have their place, and what I realized is that a deep tissue massage feels like an attack on this temple known as my body. For me, there is nothing more relaxing or aligning than being on a table and having someone treat your body like it truly is the place where God lives.
I remember lying there, warm oil, no urgency anywhere in the room, and thinking: this is what it feels like to be cared for instead of pushed through. My whole nervous system exhaled. It occurred to me that I had spent decades unconsciously teaching my body that softness wasn't safe — that the only way to earn rest was to collapse first. That hour and a half undid a little bit of that teaching. One session doesn't erase forty years of "no pain, no gain," but it planted a different question in me: what if my body doesn't have to earn tenderness? What if it's owed tenderness, simply because it's the house God lives in?
Am I going to become vegan and give up espresso milkshakes? Never! And there are ways I can be more mindful in aligning my physical being with my spiritual being, because right now they are one and the same.
So, here's an invitation, not a prescription: this week, pick one small way to inhabit rather than occupy. A slower shower. Three real breaths before you answer the next text. A hand on your own chest for ten seconds, just to say I see you, I've got you. Radical Embodiment doesn't ask you to overhaul your life. It asks you to notice you're already home — and to start acting like it.
Blessings on your journey,
Rev. Gayle
“In meditation we discover our inherent restlessness. Sometimes we get up and leave. Sometimes we sit there but our bodies wiggle and squirm and our minds go far away. This can be so uncomfortable that we feel it’s impossible to stay. Yet this feeling can teach us not just about ourselves but what it is to be human. All of us derive security and comfort from the imaginary world of memories and fantasies and plans. We really don’t want to stay with the nakedness of our present experience. It goes against the grain to stay present. These are the times when only gentleness and a sense of humor can give us the strength to settle down…so whenever we wander off, we gently encourage ourselves to “stay” and settle down. Are we experiencing restlessness? Stay! Discursive mind? Stay! Are fear and loathing out of control? Stay! Aching knees and throbbing back? Stay! What’s for lunch? Stay! What am I doing here? Stay! I can’t stand this another minute! Stay! That is how to cultivate steadfastness.” ~Pema Chodron. “The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times.”
Ernest Holmes reminds us that fear is “nothing more nor less than the negative use of faith … faith misplaced.”
So, the question becomes, can you listen to your fear without giving it the wheel to drive the bus of your life? First let me explain the bus analogy. I believe we are made up of a lot of different parts, which you can actually name: Angry Abbie, Abundant Angi, Bashful Betty, Beautiful Bea, etc. All those emotions want to consume you and want to drive the bus. Some of them make you feel powerful, and some of them, let's be frank, make you feel like shit. The trick isn't kicking any of them off the bus — they're all allowed to ride along. The trick is deciding who gets to hold the wheel.
Honoring and listening to your fear with curiosity and compassion helps you identify what the impetus is to what you're feeling. This can work with all your parts, by the way, and today we are discussing fear. If you're comfortable, sit in a quiet space and talk to your fear. Why is it showing up? When was the first time you experienced this particular fear? Then close your eyes and listen. You might be surprised how much your fear has been trying to protect you all along, even clumsily. Once you have a clear understanding, maybe write down some notes; also known as journaling. Notice patterns. Fear often repeats itself in disguise — same root, different costume.
I am kinder to other people than I am to myself. I had a discussion with a prayer partner this week, and we agreed that is probably true for most of us. Nobody on this planet knows you better than you. Maybe the next time you start to be critical of yourself, you show yourself the same compassion you'd show a child instead. Ask yourself, if this was a three-year-old, what would I be saying to it right now? You'd probably explain to them that there is nothing to be afraid of and give them examples of when they have been brave. Say those same words to yourself. You've earned them too.
It is impossible to eradicate fear. Instead, let's bring some spiritual awareness to it and let it be a catalyst for our courage.
Blessings on your journey,
Rev. Gayle
Rev. Gayle
In her book, Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone, Brene Brown writes, “When we are in pain and fear, anger and hate are our go‑to emotions…it’s easier to be pissed‑off than it is to be hurt or scared. Anger is a catalyst. Holding on to it will make us exhausted and sick… Or sometimes anger can mask a far more difficult emotion like grief, regret, or shame, and we need to use it to dig into what we’re really feeling… Courage is forged in pain, but not in all pain. Pain that is denied or ignored becomes fear or hate. Anger that is never transformed becomes resentment and bitterness.”
What if anger is an Inner Alarm System? When we stuff our anger or pretend that nothing is wrong, we are doing a spiritual bypass. I’m not saying you need to yell and scream at people when you’re angry. I am saying, if we start acting like anger is our soul’s alarm bell, then maybe we start digging into the why behind the trigger. The Truth is no one can make you angry. You respond with anger because someone has done something that causes you pain or makes you afraid. And this is where our spiritual growth happens: can you acknowledge your anger, feel your anger and spend time healing the pain or being curious about the fear without involving the person that found the trigger and pressed it?
I wish I could say I was an expert at containing my anger, that I always used all the tools I’ve learned, and that’s just not true. Many times, when I get angry, I still either push it down or explode. One is a festering that eventually will find its outlet and the other is just embarrassing because now I have given my power to the person that pressed the trigger…intentionally, or not.
The tools are available to all of us. I’ll admit they sometimes don’t seem easy to access, especially when the person pushing the trigger is a partner or a member of our family. It is not always easy to remember the person standing before you is a reflection of you. Like you, they have their triggers. Like you they have been hurt and wounded. And maybe, just maybe unlike you they don’t know about the tools.
The hardest thing to do when you’re angry is to take a breath, realize you are at a choice point and maybe respond with grace instead of anger. Instead of making it about you, defuse the situation by being curious – try to find out why this person is saying the things they are saying. If you can’t be curious, don’t respond. Take a moment, look them straight in the eye and tell them you’ll have to get back to them and walk away. Their anger, their hurt, their fear stays with them. Your spiritual practice is to do the work to find out why you were triggered and what needs to be healed within you, so you are less likely to “go off like a firecracker.”
I’m still working on my trigger when I am driving a car. Trust me, I am 80 percent better than I used to be, and I still let other drivers tick me off. The thing is, especially now in my life, they don’t even know I am on the road. They’re in their own bubble, driving too fast or too slow, not using their turn signals, whatever! I’m still working on “why does it make me angry”, “why do I feel my blood pressure rise”. Do I have all the answers? Absolutely not — I said 80 percent not 100 percent. I am a work in progress and that is really important for us all to remember.
If you get angry and blow up, you can’t change the response. You can make amends for “your” behavior and remind yourself this is just a page in a chapter in the book of your life and promise yourself you’ll do better.
Blessings on your journey,
Rev. Gayle
Rev. Gayle
