Embodiment & the Bible by A.C. SeipleНамуна

“My head and my spirit know what’s true, but my body is just so sad.” A sweet friend spoke these words to me last week just a day after an incredibly painful loss. She was giving voice to the complexity of what she was experiencing internally, holding the many “both-ands” that can make life confusing, especially when it feels like our bodies are on a different page from our brains.

Along with their cries from places of distress and overwhelm, the psalmists sing from places of peace and joy. What I love about verses like these are that we know they do not exist apart from verses that also describe distress and overwhelm. There is so much “both-and” in the Psalms that opens us to curiosity about how we experience “both-ands” in our own lives. And if the term “both-and” is new to you, I’m simply talking about how life is rarely one thing. We might have a new job that we’re starting, and we feel both excited and nervous. Maybe we have lost a loved one, and we feel both grieved and at peace. Maybe we go to church on Sundays, and we feel both connected with God, and in other ways disconnected from God.

The Psalms invite us to hold the many “both-ands” of life, seeing things through more than one perspective at once. Just as these ancient voices knew, we know what it’s like to see things from more than one point of view, especially in our faith. For so many of us, we know what it’s like to both believe that God hears us, and also, not see God anywhere. We know what it’s like to have faith and be crushed by hopelessness. And when we experience these “both-ands” internally, it can be easy to view certain perspectives as problems, parts of us that lack faith or just need to get it together.

As we read through a couple of Psalms today, I’d love to invite us to notice just how honestly these ancient voices speak from right where they are—and tell God about it. See what it’s like to get curious about the things that you don’t openly speak to God, the perspectives within that you hush or shame as lacking faith or being bad. Maybe you play with joining these ancient voices, crying out to God from right where you are, the “both-ands” that you hold inside, trusting that just as God was able to hold all the “both-ands” of the psalmists’ cries, God can also hold all the “both-ands” of your cries as well. As you read through these “both-ands,” and tune in with your own, I’m curious, what do those different things feel like in your body? What is it like to tune in with the psalmists’ words and also tune in with your body?

If you enjoyed this reading plan, you can read more from author, A.C. Seiple in The Sacred Art of Slowing Down.