ISBC 16 - To Comfort and to Care
Chapter 16 of Hope: A User's Manual
With today, we make a shift into the third part of the book, “Hope Lives in the Body.” Everything in these next eight days will center on really tangible senses of how hope is felt (or not felt) in our physical bodies. I love this section because my experience has been that hope often gets defined as something mental or emotional and it is definitely both of those. But it is also physical. So let’s jump in with the first chapter in this section... To Comfort and to Care.
There’s plenty to feel hopeless about, and everything feels like an emergency. But hope lives in the body—a finite, human body, or what Paul called treasure in clay jars. Those bodies deserve care and comfort, however we can manage it.1
I got this scar on the base of my right thumb about eight years ago in the office of the previous congregation I served. My office had these really old windows that didn’t all open very well and some of them opened only when you pushed gently on the metal cross pieces in the window. Well, one day I was trying to open a window and pushed not on the metal but right on the glass and my hand went right through the glass. The worst cut was here at the base of my thumb, but my whole wrist went through and I got another few cuts right at my wrist. I was really lucky that it wasn’t any worse because there were some serious jagged edges. (If you dig deep enough into some of my old posts, you might find a photo of the cut on my thumb...)
Anyway, it was not able to be stitched because of the type of cut and so it took a while to heal up. It healed fine and there was no functional damage, just cosmetic. I just have this sort-of-X-shaped scar there from how it healed and I often find myself fidgeting with the healed scar with my right index finger. The weird thing is that I have some gratitude connected to this scar. I’m not grateful that the injury happened but I am grateful for the amazing healing abilities of our bodies (seriously, take a few moments and think about the ways that your body has healed from things that have taken place). I’m also grateful for what this scar reminds me of. This all happened right around the time that I was beginning a major healing transformation in my life. There was so much ahead that I had no idea about, so much that was painful, so much that was amazing, so much that was miraculous, so much that I grieved (and still do), all of it. But this scar happened right as all of it was about to begin. And today, I look at that scar and see the healing that happened in it and in me and how I need to honor finding hope in my body and how I need to honor that in others as well.
There’s a wonderful music group called The Many who has a song that speaks to this called, “These Bodies” - Take a listen.
How do you experience hope in your body?
Grace, Peace, Love, and Joy,
Ed
McKibben Dana, MaryAnn. Hope: A User's Manual (p. 78). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Kindle Edition.
Thank you for sharing that song! I like it. Besser VanderKolk wrote the book entitled The Body Keeps the Score. We know that the body holds and expresses traumas physically with auto-immune dis-eases, etc. For me, the throat is a frequent area of vulnerability—from constant sore throats —tonsils removed at age 3 —carrier of strep, eventually 5 cervical spinal fusions, Now scar tissue pressing on my larynx, etc. For years I “swallowed” my trauma and did NOT speak up. (THATs no longer an issue 😅😅). But I still choose hope—I still choose joy—and I look for microhappinesses on the daily. Where does hope reside in my physical body? I feel like it’s often in my thoughts—so it must be in my head—-yet I pause often to let in trickle down towards my heart. Sometimes I can sense that actually happening . It’s like a thought bubble gets “swallowed” and hangs out in my thoat for awhile—blasting its way through the yuck that is stuck in my throat. And it can warm up my throat energetically so my body can release the yuck through my skin/my kidneys/my GI tract. It lightens the heaviness. It can brighten and energize my heart—my extremities right out of my fingertips and toes. But there is still a bit of a bypassing—a disconnect in my solar plexus (right beneath my belly button. I don’t sense it in my core self until I’ve completely released the yuck and replaced the yuck with hope. Until that happens, I’m a bit of a mess of hope and darker stuff. But I hold onto hope because hope is lighter and hope glistens. I may sound like I’m all over the place but it makes perfect sense to me!