Once there was a body.\u00a0 It was beautiful. \u00a0It was perfect. \u00a0It was made of many different parts.\u00a0 There were hands and feet and a heart and a mind and there was love.\u00a0 The body was healthy and whole; many members, one complete being.\u00a0 One time the body was so content that the\u00a0heart thought it would be ok \u00a0if it took a short nap and it\u00a0went to sleep. \u00a0 The mind, right away thought it knew what to do next, and it started giving orders. \u00a0\u201cRight arm,\u201d it said, \u201d I don\u2019t think you are pulling your weight around here.\u00a0 It told the right arm to work.\u00a0 It told that arm that if it didn\u2019t work, it wasn\u2019t really a part of the body.\u00a0 So the right arm got to work planting food, pulling weeds.\u00a0 Then the mind thought, \u201cLeft arm, I think I should be enjoying some of that hard work the right arm is doing.\u201d So as the harvest came, the left arm would grab the food and feed it to the mouth. \u00a0 This went on for a little while till\u00a0the right arm complained, \u201cI am tired.\u00a0 I need a rest.\u201d And, \u201cThis is not fair\u201d.\u00a0 And the left arm complained, \u201c I am tired too from only doing one thing.\u00a0 I feel weak and numb.\u201d But the mind did not listen. \u00a0The right arm kept working and the left arm grabbed even more food for the mouth. \u00a0Then one day something terrible happened.\u00a0 The right arm broke because it had worked too hard and was not allowed to rest. \u00a0And the left arm which had only been reduced to one motion was so shriveled and shrunken it didn\u2019t even look like an arm any more. \u00a0 The body\u2019s arms both\u00a0hurt so badly that the heart finally woke up.\u00a0 What a mess the heart found.\u00a0 The heart cried tears of sorrow and pain that its beautiful body was broken.\u00a0 It said, \u201cDon\u2019t you remember that we are all one body together?\u201d \u00a0Suddenly the mind realized what it had done.\u00a0 So the heart and the mind decided they needed to help the arms and the whole body heal.\u00a0 They started by listening, so they would best know how to help the body to heal.\u00a0 They listened to the right arm and listened to the left so they could understand what they needed. \u00a0They asked the right arm and the left arm to listen to one another. \u00a0When we re-member a broken bone, bring the pieces back together, it hurts, but it\u2019s what needs to happen in order for the bone and the whole body to heal.\u00a0 Our bodies can\u2019t be well if any part of us is broken, the whole body needs to be healed for us to be well.\u00a0 Can we help this body to re-member itself?<\/p>\n
When I need to do something that hurts in order to get better, it always helps me to start from a place of love. Today with the body of our church, we may hear some hard things that wake our hearts up to the pain of our own broken places.\u00a0 But we need to listen the best we can if we want to change the brokenness and re-member our larger body back together. We need each other. We belong to each other.\u00a0 So I wonder if we can all get ready to listen.\u00a0 Can we start from a place of love?\u00a0 I\u2019m going to ask our whole church body to help us too.\u00a0 If you don\u2019t want to share a touch with your neighbor, or if you are sitting out of reach, can you put your\u00a0hand\u00a0on your own heart?\u00a0 If you want to share a touch of love, can you put your hand on your neighbor\u2019s back. \u00a0 I wonder if we can imagine the hand touching us as the hand of love?\u00a0 Can you feel that love calling you to re-member the story of our belonging?\u00a0 I wonder if we can listen well enough with our hand, our hearts and our minds and our whole selves to hear a beating heart?\u00a0 Can you listen well enough to hear breathing, in and out?\u00a0 I wonder if we really really listen if we can hear the heartbeat of our whole church body today, can you hear us all breathing?\u00a0 I wonder if we listen even more deeply if we can hear the heartbeat of our whole city or state or country?\u00a0 Can you hear us all breathe together?\u00a0 Let\u2019s try to keep this feeling in our hearts and bodies as we try to listen with our whole selves to the story of our broken body.\u00a0 Then let\u2019s try to hold on to each other in love and belonging till we can heal together.\u00a0 May it be so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Once there was a body.\u00a0 It was beautiful. \u00a0It was perfect. \u00a0It was made of many different parts.\u00a0 There were hands and feet and a heart and a mind and there was love.\u00a0 The body was healthy and whole; many members, one complete being.\u00a0 One time the body was so content that the\u00a0heart thought it would be ok \u00a0if it took a short nap and it\u00a0went to sleep.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-category"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":215,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214\/revisions\/215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}