Liturgy of Lent: Embodiment
Day Seven
call
God of our bodies and our experience of living, open our eyes to the sanctity of this here-and-now life. Wake us from our sleep.
meditation
I have carried in my coat, black wet
with rain. I stand. I clear my throat.
My coat drips. The carved door closes
on its slow brass hinge. City noises—
car horns, bicycle bells, the respiration
truck engines, the whimpering
steel in midtown taxi brakes—bend
in through the doorjamb with the wind
then drop away. The door shuts plumb: it seals
the world out like a coffin lid. A chill,
dampened and dense with the spent breath
of old Hail Marys, lifts from the smoothed
stone of the nave. I am here to pay
my own respects, but I will wait:
my eyes must grow accustomed
to church light, watery and dim.
I step in. Dark forms hunch forward
in the pews. Whispering, their heads
are bowed, their mouths pressed
to the hollows of clasped hands.
High overhead, a gathering of shades
glows in stained glass: the resurrected
mingle with the dead and martyred
in panes of blue, green, yellow, red.
Beneath them lies the golden holy
altar, holding its silence like a bell,
and there, brightly skeletal beside it,
the organ pipes: cold, chrome, quiet
but alive with a vibration tolling
out from the incarnate
source of holy sound. I turn, shivering
back into my coat. The vaulted ceiling
bends above me like an ear. It waits:
I hold my tongue. My body is my prayer.
Malachi Black; Entering Saint Patrick’s Cathedral
reading
The following takes place after a discussion on fasting between Jesus and the disciples of John.
As Jesus was saying this, the leader of a synagogue came and knelt before him. “My daughter has just died,” he said, “but you can bring her back to life again if you just come and lay your hand on her.”
So Jesus and his disciples got up and went with him. Just then a woman who had suffered for twelve years with constant bleeding came up behind him. She touched the fringe of his robe, for she thought, “If I can just touch his robe, I will be healed.”
Jesus turned around, and when he saw her he said, “Daughter, be encouraged! Your faith has made you well.” And the woman was healed at that moment.
When Jesus arrived at the official’s home, he saw the noisy crowd and heard the funeral music. “Get out!” he told them. “The girl isn’t dead; she’s only asleep.” But the crowd laughed at him. After the crowd was put outside, however, Jesus went in and took the girl by the hand, and she stood up! The report of this miracle swept through the entire countryside.
Matthew 9:18-26
prayer
Lord, you cared for our bodies, you paid close attention, loving attention to the way our lives felt as we lived them. You lay your embodied hands on our physical selves to impart your love. You’ve never denied us the holiness of our own experience. Thank you for seeing us as we are and not looking away. Thank you for acknowledging the ways our experiences shape us. To deny our lived experience and the forces that shape it, be it our health, our caste, our race, our gender expression, our sexuality, is to deny incarnation itself. When we ignore the impact of our Experience, it is often done so to protect the ego of those with status and power, those who have been complicit in shaping harmful experiences. We then deny our own embodiment; we deny our very existence. Let our hunched, shivering bodies be our prayer.
confession
God of the physical, created world, we confess of all the ways we’ve built a golden city around you, relegating your kingdom to the life to come. What blasphemy. Over and over you show us that the care of our physicality, the nature of our experiences, and the stewarding of your creation matters to you. Over and over again, we say to one another that your care must be for later, not for now, that is must be for salvation, not embodiment. We confess because each time we separate another person from that which they’ve experienced, we deny incarnation.
benediction
May the realities of your physical world and the truth of your lived experience be seen and acknowledged today. May the embodied presence of love shine on and through you.