Spirituality and Embracing the Body
Gade Duerksen
Spirituality is an odd thing. It can potentially exist apart from reason; it is grounded, in part, in the "feeling" or emotional aspect of our experience; it is hypothetically accessible to all no matter what level of education or mental ability, no matter what race or age, no matter what gender, no matter what economic status one falls into; it can be an individual or a collective experience. Spirituality is something that defies words, yet continues to be the subject of hot debate. In addition, it often comes with a set of rules and distinctions.
Most world religions claim spirituality as an aspect of their belief system. Most have methods of acceptable spiritual practice, and many religions have, at some point, excluded the spiritual practices of other religions. Christianity, for example, has a long history of demonizing other religious customs and spiritual practices in order to gain power and political influence. From Constantine to James Dobson, those with religious and political power have been dictating what is and what is not acceptable "Christian" spiritual practice.
Mennonites, in my opinion, are not innocent bystanders in this. Growing up Mennonite in the rural Midwest, I learned quickly that spirituality was an antonym of physicality. Physical objects, including one's body, were barriers and distractions to the ultimate goal of reaching the spiritual realm. Catholics were suspect for their use of icons and incense, Jews might as well have not existed outside the holy land (so scarce were Jews within even a 500 mile radius surrounding our tiny community), and Eastern beliefs and practices were simply "ungodly."
I learned that that things of "the flesh"were burdens and dangers to be overcome, while the spiritual body -- that which lived on in the afterlife -- should, in order to reap the most favorable benefits, be kept pure. In church and in my daily life, I absorbed the message that this physical world and this physical body were only temporary. Pain and sorrow were burdens of our humanity -- the price we must pay for following Christ. Just as he suffered in this world, so we were also bound to suffer in his name. In light of the suffering of our forebears, of the early Anabaptists who died as martyrs for their beliefs, we also were taught to reject the flesh for the greater glory of heaven.
Our spiritual selves were marred and neglected by too much focus on our physical bodies, and on physical pleasure. Physical pleasure was perceived as anything pulling us away from where our primary focus should ultimately rest -- on God. In rural Kansas, our Mennonite roots grew close to the Amish. Material objects were temptations to idolatry. Secular music, T.V. programming, movies: all of these drew Christians away from our focus on the one true God. Fortunately, in the small town where I attended K-12th grades, there were some exceptions to this theology, and it was acceptable to excel at band and vocal music, as well as at team sports.
As is the case in many small, Midwestern towns rooted in traditional Christianity, mixed messages abounded. The man who could talk at length to his neighbor about animal husbandry didn't have a clue how to talk to his children about sexuality. Behaviors that were unacceptable for girls were overlooked or chuckled at when exhibited by boys. Thus, the more my physical self developed, the more spiritually frightened and confused I became.
Sexuality, for me, was a painful, private, and often shameful experience. Neither my parents nor my church invited open discussion about what I was experiencing as I went through the alarming and, in my case, deeply unwanted physical changes of puberty. And more importantly, the physical changes and development my peers and I were going through were rarely celebrated, but rather came with a whole new set of "Thou shalt nots." The focus was on the negative: sex before marriage--bad; alcohol at any age or for any reason--bad; smoking--bad; drugs--bad; homosexuality--bad; dancing--almost always bad; too much physical contact with the opposite sex--bad; R-rated movies--very un-Christian, and therefore, bad. And the list went on. Needless to say, my tortured teenage soul longed for something or someone to help me bridge the disconnect between what I was being told and what I was experiencing on a deep physical and spiritual level. Not finding this in my community, I hid my rage, becoming self-destructive and at times, suicidal.
Out of this self-destruction, my journey of spiritual practice began in the hayloft of the barn on my parents' farm. I used to spend entire days covered in layers of sweat and thick dust as I practiced endless lay-ups and free throws on our makeshift basketball court. The buckles in the warped wood floor, the mounds of pigeon droppings, and the piles of discarded antique farm equipment made for good opponents as I pounded out my aggression and cleared my mind of all but one thing: basketball. I felt complete in those private moments, and nothing was more disconcerting than climbing down that rickety wooden ladder, opening the barn door, stepping out into the blinding Kansas sun, and back into my dismal reality.
After high school, I attended a quasi-liberal Mennonite-identified college, which was liberating for me. For the most part, the student body and the majority of the faculty tolerated and even accepted expressions of alternative sexuality. Creativity was encouraged, as was thinking critically and outside the box. Alcohol and experimentation with drugs often received a blind eye, even though the school took a hard-nosed stance against substance use and abuse in written and verbal policy. In college, I learned to embrace the pleasures of the flesh -- I drank hard, danced harder, and experimented sexually. Through all of this I continued to wrestle intellectually with what I had been told throughout my childhood, with what I was learning academically, and with what I felt at a deeply physical level. What surprised me, and what was at the same time profoundly refreshing, was the realization that my physical and spiritual selves were not only connected, but powerfully intertwined.
After graduating from college and leaving Kansas for good, I found Martial Arts. I joined a small dojo in Minneapolis, MN founded by Shifu Koré Grate, where we studied Wu Chien Pai, a martial arts system rooted in Chinese Medicine and Taoism, meditation, and healing arts. From Shifu Koré, I learned a respect for my body and the bodies of my classmates that I had never known. Through discipline and repetition we learned freedom; through a Misogi purification ritual and 1,008 punches we brought in a new year; through knowing where violence originates, we learned to live non-violently. Shifu Koré became my spiritual teacher, and Wu Chien Pai my spirituality and my quest for divinity.
My theological and spiritual journey brought me to Pacific School of Religion (PSR) in Berkeley, CA for my Masters studies. Here I cemented my conviction that healthy spirituality must not only embrace a positive opinion of the physical body, but that the physical body should be incorporated into one's spiritual practice. At PSR I took a number of semesters of the body-based spiritual practice InterPlay with one of its founders, Cynthia Winton-Henry. One of the most powerful lessons I learned in InterPlay is that anyone -- regardless of physical ability, athleticism, body size or proportion -- can experience body-wisdom through learning to reconnect his or her mind, body, heart, and soul.
Carla DeSola, a pioneer of liturgical dance, became one of my most powerful spiritual teachers at PSR. It was through her that I learned grace in spite of myself. She taught us that even the simplest movements can bring worship and scripture to life. She taught us to experience scripture through our bodies -- to live and to move our faith in ways beyond words. She taught us to relate to God and to each other through movement and through our experience of the body.
Those of us who identify as part of the LGBTQQI (Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Intersex) community are forced to deal with our physical selves at a different level. Our bodies are constantly being held up in front of us both by those who condemn and those who embrace. Our sexuality and gender expressions become our constant identity. We are also forced into a defensive position theologically, as we are faced with a longstanding tradition of biblical misinterpretation and exclusive church polity. It took me years of inner turmoil, therapy, pages and pages of writing, creating art, and ultimately cutting ties with my Mennonite identity before I could fully embrace what it meant to connect my spiritual and physical selves in to one holistic being.
My choice to leave the Mennonite church was a long and difficult one, but I am now a member of a church and denomination that recognize how the divine can be found in our physical selves. This church has come to embrace liturgical movement as a valid part of worship, as a valid part of scriptural interpretation, and as a valid part of our spiritual journey. I hope that someday more Mennonites and Mennonite congregations will become comfortable celebrating ourbodies through movement.
I believe that in order to fully embrace our spirituality, we must find a spiritual practice that allows us to rediscover the connection between our mind, body, heart and soul. We need to encourage this holistic sense of self through dismantling the rules and boundaries of what is "acceptable"spiritual practice, through encouraging exploration of movement, by discovering our bodies as a means of worship, and by embracing the wisdom of our physical selves.
Gade Duerksen currently lives in Orlando, FL with his wife, Talia Raymond, and two dogs, Miles and Rocky. Gade continues to search for the perfect career, and hopes to someday run a retreat center with Talia where art and dance and creativity become a catalyst for self-empowerment and social change. In the meantime, Gade is Coordinator of Winter Park Family and Emergency Services, which is part of the Christian Service Center of Central Florida. He graduated with a Master of Divinity degree.