The body as a sacred vessel

"For some, the body is far from feeling like a sacred vessel. It is more like a repository for accumulated shame and abuse. Some people suffered overt abuse in childhood; others are wounded from the culture's distorted images of perfection -- ideals of thinness and eternal youth for women, and bulk and invulnerability for men. The poison of self-hate, born of unattainable cultural standards, flows in many men's and women's bodies. Some of us are so afraid to delve into the secrets trapped within the body's memory that we float through life, quite unable to enjoy the strength and earthiness of our human form."

-- Elizabeth Lesser, The Seeker's Guide

This is the most recent edition of my goddess/torso series. (I will have to figure out what to call these things, won't I! I suppose I am waiting for them to come to completion so I can see what the overall impact is...) And looking at her brought to mind this passage, which I read yesterday in The Seeker's Guide. What's interesting to me is that this passage lies within the passage I quoted two days ago -- between the first and second halves of it -- and I honestly did not even see it the first time through. Now doesn't THAT sound like a Freudian slip! Maybe that's what I should call this image...

So here I am, with no preconceived notions, walking through this with you to see what I can discover about what it has to tell us. The first thing I notice is that the torso itself has a very victorian feel to it; something about the shape of the bust -- no definition between the boobs -- and the narrow laced-in feeling of the waist. Add to that the sense of chains encircling the breast and hips, and there's a very confining aspect to this one -- which may be why the quote above came to mind.

Our images of ourselves and our bodies are very much constrained by societal demands and expectations. I can't know what that means for you, but I know how it has affected me and my daughters: I grew up thin, flat, and narrow-hipped in a German community where girls developed early and ripely, and though today that body I had would be considered model-lovely, I only knew it as lacking. (And now, of course, with the curves that weight and child-bearing have brought, I find myself longing for a return to that earlier slimness.)

My slim, curvaceous daughter refuses to wear shorts because she is embarrassed by her pale legs, and my less-curvy daughter, though she is less embarrassed to show her body, constantly compares it to her sister's and finds it lacking, whining -- as I once did -- that she "looks like a boy." I ache for them both, because, to me, they are both achingly beautiful, and I wish they could see that.

I also see, looking at this picture, that the background seems to circle around the torso, and is also strangely broken: perhaps this is a way of saying that as long as our self-image revolves around our body image -- and what is projected onto it by society -- we will remain broken -- or at least, I will. And I think, to some extent, that stays true: even as, in aging, I grow more accustomed to -- or comfortable with -- myself, I still find I'm very self-conscious, often worrying about how people react to me, how they see me, and what they project onto me. And I still dress with an eye to hiding my imperfections -- I don't wear shorts, either -- no matter HOW hot it gets!

And then, when I look at those two little handles that sit in the crack at either side of the waist, they look a bit like the pop-tops on a soup can, and I find I want to break the whole thing open; to find out what would happen if I were able, not only to release these expectations, but also to make them less central to my self-image. If I pop open the hard crust that lies beneath, what will appear? Or what if I grab those two rings at the top, and peel the image away? What will be revealed?

Taking one last look, I see an almost Christ-like figure, arms outstretched, rising from the center of the chest, between the rings -- or is it holding on to the rings? And looking at that, I come to see the whole as a gift, all of it -- the constraints and the brokenness, the distortions and the insecurities, the old and the new, the thin and the fat, the flat and the curves, the whole centrifugal whirl of it -- a gift, one of many, which gives me another path of discovery, another light to illuminate the wholeness of being. However flawed, we remain a sacred vessel: God/Christ/Divinity is always there, even in our brokenness and confusion and self-doubt; we have only to pay attention to see.