Our most intimate relationship in this life is with our body. From before birth, it is who we are. Everything we experience, see, question, learn, resist, love – is mediated in and through the body. A tangible, living map of our whole lives, our bodies are our first experience of the immediacy of being here, and of awe at the mystery of life

Some argue that we are “more” than a physical self, but our bodies are our first home. Spiritual traditions have sometimes warned of the “baseness” or commonness of the body – have spoken of it as something to be denied, transcended, suppressed, tamed, fought against. But newer spiritual perspectives cast a more integrative, gentler light on our physical “home.” In her most recent book “The Monk Within: embracing a sacred way of life,” theologian and spiritual teacher Beverly Lanzetta writes, “The body is…. a microcosm of the universe, and houses a unique configuration of the cosmos……The body-spiritual entity known as ‘the self’ is interdependent with the cosmos: we literally are composed of seawater, stars, and clouds.”

Throughout our lives, our bodies will change – shift – mature – falter – as will our relationship to them. But we are never alone – the Holy embraces us in and through our bodies.

If, then, our bodies are our physical home and our spiritual dwelling, any diminishment of health is not just a tangible impairment but a psychological and even spiritual shock. And witnessing the loss of someone we have loved is not just another emotional tremor, but a wrenching reminder for our own bodies that they are at risk. We are all at risk.

My friend F has been struck down – not out yet, but low. After half a year or so of vague symptoms, she’s been diagnosed with cancer. She might have six to 12 months to live, the experts say. Her family is rallying around. They do a good job of that. But for F, so used to taking care of herself – staying mentally alert and physically able – it’s a blow. Our bodies, as the women’s health initiative of the 1960’s noted, are our selves. And though we all know that our time on this planet, in this life, are limited, for the most part we live as if that weren’t true. For what can we do, really, but be here?

Given a couple of options for treatment – one of them being not to do anything at all – Florence has chosen to accept medications that will give her the best quality of life for as long as she has. “It’s been a good body,” she says. She’d like to give it a chance.

Grief is not limited to losing someone we love – it can also be experienced in the loss of our capacities, or even the loss of what we have imagined our future to be.

Our bodies are tender, vulnerable, ultimately gentle, unfaltering faithful. Our relationship with them is a sacred companionship, And while we may wish we were endowed with different physical attributes, the bottom line is, this is what we are.

Physical or emotional illness or challenges can strike deep – how are we to trust our bodies, our minds, if they are unpredictable, weak, susceptible to the ravages of time and change?

Loss of life (someone else’s, or a sudden, new limit to our own) is a shocking, painful, reality that permeates not just our sense of emotional well-being, but shakes and erodes our identity and shocks the fabric of our whole world. Loss plunges us into Mystery and our questions about the meaning of life, and of death.

In times of loss – whether of someone we’ve loved, or some reality that is shifting and diminished, or of the reality we’ve known as our bodies – we can do a few things. We can be gentle with ourselves – develop compassion with our battered and beleaguered bodies. If someone we know is suffering a health impairment, we can remember that their suffering is a spiritual trauma as well as a physical illness. In these instances, sometimes all we can do is witness what we can’t change, and try to understand.

Sometimes lately, as my body shifts and changes and is humbled into a disgruntled submission with various pains, I think about the words Jesus is reported to have spoken at the last supper – “This is my Body….” He was saying this of what he shared with his disciples – bread and wine, that represented his actual Self.

My experience, of course, is different. But I repeat those words to myself these days – occasionally in disbelief, in shock, but ever more often, in great love. “This is my body – that has held me for so many years. This is my body – that has suffered, rallied, fallen, broken, recovered, and persevered. This is my body – whole and yet aging…..This is my body, missing what it’s lost, and still looking forward to what could still become.”

I recognize my body as a bio-spiritual co-participation in this amazing and mysterious world.

And I am so grateful.