Last night at Ignatian Associates This Ignatian Life blogger John O’Keefe talked about the idea of resurrection of the body. ”I believe in the resurrection of the body.”  We’ve all said it during our baptismal renewals. I think about how imperfect my body is; an imperfect body in a perfect place like heaven? “But our bodies will be made perfect,” says my friend Silas… then he responds to himself, “I guess what does that mean? What’s perfect?” Exactly. Would I be a size zero in heaven because that’s the American perception of perfection or will I be a plus-size model because that’s the Nepali perception of perfection? Not perfect but healthy, perhaps? Resurrecting this body puts a new spin on eating right, exercising and taking care of my body… if I’m going to have this for all eternity I want to take good care of it.

I will, after all, be a solid body in a solid place, not a heavenly soul in an ethereal place.

Yesterday I was in a rehearsal for a modern dance piece that is based on Barry Commoner’s 4 Laws of Ecology. The choreagrapher said “I want this piece earthy, I want a quality of movement not up in heaven but connected to the land.”  The quality of movement I learned as a young ballet dancer is ethereal, it’s high, on your toes, everything is focused on being lifted out of your body. High legs, high jumps, keep your head high above the rest of you, dance on your very tippy toes. Later on as a dancer I fell in love with modern dance. This style of dance began to develop in the 1930’s as a sort of reaction to the out of this world feeling of ballet. Modern is performed in bare feet, dancers use their breath and stomp the floor, everything is low and very connected to earth and to reality. They danced about social issues and created pieces like the one I am in; on ecology and care for the environment.  

Everything is connected; the first law of ecology. The growth in my dance life from ethereal to earthy is connected to similar movements in my personal Christianity, from hope of ethereal resurrection of the soul to belief in earthly resurrection of the body. The implications, as John talked about yesterday, are enormous. Now there is care of creation, of the body, of others and of earthly justice and peace.  “Human nature, he said “is by definition material, resurrection means resurrected to a new kind of physical life not just transcending to the heavenly realm.” If we don’t just leave it all behind when we go, then we have a lot more incentive to care.

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