Embracing the Body
Finding God in Our Flesh and Bone
- 2015 INDIES Winner
- Gold, Body, Mind & Spirit (Adult Nonfiction)
With that first breath of God into the dust of the earth, we have been “tied tight, held, commingled with the sand and the stars,” writes Tara M. Owens. “And we’ve been running from this awareness ever since, not wanting to admit that no matter what we do, no matter how hard we try, we must always come back to the crumbling and quotidian, the unglamorous and ashy. Imperfect and holy at the same time, placed somewhere between animal and angel, we struggle with the fact that our bodies are rarely what we would have them be. Subject to decay, and finally death, the body may be a source of pain and conflict, frailty and dependence, and sometimes, shame.”
Owens, a certified spiritual director and senior editor for Conversations Journal, addresses the disconnect most of us, and our churches, experience between ourselves and the physical world around us, even though it is in the body that heaven actively meets earth.
Through a gentle, compassionate exploration of our thoughts and feelings about our bodies, enhanced with exercises for reflection, Owens helps us to learn what it means to be at home in our own skin and sensitive to the body’s innate wisdom.
“We may not be transformed into the world’s ideal of physical beauty,” she writes, “but we will find ourselves reflected in the eyes of the One who finds us so alluring that he left the heavenly realms to be with us, the One whose very breath sustains this figure of dust and dreams.”
Reviewed by
Kristine Morris
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
