On Good Friday: Affirming the body

There is a grave error in the penitential notion of “mortifying the body.”

It replicates the false dualism of “spirit versus matter ” that crept into and overwhelmed the Jewish faith and practice of Jesus as his followers spread out through the Greco-Roman world.

A truer practice is to “affirm the body,” to affirm it as a mortal yet sacred part of the divine whole.

When I allow myself to suffer the large or small sufferings of my body,

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Pandemic reset

Never mind the endless cycling
of what we call news

ensorcelling tales of political theater,
social distress, and un-
natural disasters

things happening
elsewhere.

We are in the salutary midst
of the fall.

XVI The Tower trump card from the Marseilles deckWhat is close
is real.

Think of children
now

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“So who is this ‘Bright Cow,’ anyway?” – from April 13, 2008

Flying crow (1024px)

Occasionally people wonder where I got the totem name Bright Crow that I use in my email address. Here’s the story I wrote to explain it in the voice of Walhydra’s amanuensis in 2008.


Walhydra likes to tease her amanuensis about a typo he makes occasionally with his totem name, Bright Crow.

Since he’s been typing for forty years, often to earn a living, he just shrugs and laughs. Nonetheless, she thinks the question

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Spiritual life is physical

Human dualism drawing

In “Loss of shared space: the second pandemic” (4/17/2020), I wrote:

Our brains are hardwired so that the mere sight of a face [online] in real time minimally satisfies the need for a sense of presence with each other. But, our brains are in bodies in the material world. And our bodies need more than that minimal sight on a screen in order to feel—to know in the blood—that we are really in the midst of other people.

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Mark 2:1-12

Lutheran church chancel

As the pastor began to speak the absolution,
+++I stood up and
+++interrupted the liturgy.

“Anyone who looks into their hearts
+++and acknowledges what they find there
+++also finds the power
+++to forgive
+++themselves.”

To the woman on my right
+++I said,
+++“You can still make love

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