First Post!

This blog is a space for me to think through the tremendously complex intersections of personal existence, church life, and responsible living in America in the 21st century.  I am (and have been for sometime) a student studying in Boston for the Anglican Priesthood.  In fact, I've been studying for so long now, I think it will be a bit strange to experience life -- not as a student, but as a professional minister.  I ask myself, what will that look like?  I think one of the things it looks like is for me to engage with the world I live in through the written word.

I like to write, and there are a lot of things that deeply bother me.  The more I read, and the more I intentionally listen to you (my readers, those who are in the various communities that I live in, those who are from communities I used to live in but now don't, and those who are strangers to me) the more I realize that a lot of what bothers me also bothers you.  

I named this blog "Reconciled Bodies" because I think the phrase holds a lot of room for exploration.  We use the word "body" to refer to many aspects of our experience of living the life we have.  We also wrap much of our identity around how we perceive our bodies, and how others perceive them.  Our sexuality, our race, our own personal history of growing up and discovering that we live in a very large world with very real sorrows and very real joys, our expectations for the future and our memories of the past are all deeply wrapped up in our bodies.  

Yet, the word body also can refer to more than one person as well.  A "body of people" refers to a "group" of people who all share in some common interest or desire or goal or belief or assumption.  The great religious bodies of our world and the great political bodies both claim our allegiance and involvement in different ways.  Part of being a responsible human being is choosing how we are involved in these bodies.  Using our resources, our time, and our energy in a way that nourishes our own body while also providing for the well being of the body of others in a way that increases the common good is central to our very humanity.  

Our bodies are also in conflict.  Statistically, many of us have experienced very terrible atrocities and violations to our own bodies -- and we bear the emotional and psychological wounds and memories.  Many of the larger, corporate bodies that we belong to are also in conflict.  Each of these larger bodies also has a history -- a shared memory of past wounds, triumphs, and expectations for the future.  

The Christian Church(s) centrally make the claim that the wounds we each bear in all of our several bodies can be healed in the Body of Christ.  Yet each of them (individually) bears its own permanent markers of separation from everyone else.  There are really just two questions that I think all the reasonable topics within this blog fit into.  Everything else that can be said can be phrased inside of these two questions.

1. How does healing (reconciliation) in the Body of Christ work?
2. What does that healing look like for me and the bodies that I am a part of?

There are some relatively obvious things that can be excluded right off the bat.  For starters, we can say that reconciliation doesn't mean pretending that we aren't, in fact, different.  When we gloss over our differences in the name of unity we practically end up in a fairy tale.  We end up in a world that we all know doesn't actually exist.  Additionally, we may say that reconciliation also doesn't mean insisting that my viewpoint is, in fact, the one that God shares.  We can and should bring God into the journey of reconciling our bodies, but if the result of having brought God in further increases our distance than perhaps we need to rework many of our fundamental assumptions.  Lastly, (and this one is perhaps not so obvious) reconciliation isn't the same thing as suppression, but it may involve denial.  Suppression involves the coercive use of power to achieve peace.  Denial involves the voluntary suspension of self in order to hear the other.  

We may say that in order to reconcile our bodies, and to do so within the Body of Christ, we must listen.  That is, of course, a very ironic thing to have in the first post on a blog of all things, but bear with me.  My hope is that if you are still reading, if you decide to engage with my blog, perhaps we share a few things in common.  Like you, I am deeply curious about how this reconciliation of our bodies takes place.  Like you, I am stumbling towards a deeper appreciation for and understanding of my role in this reconciliation.  Like you, I am grieved by the horror of a world torn by violence.  Like you, I bear within me (against all odds) the hope that reconciliation is possible.