Integration.
"When you see this your heart shall rejoice, and your bodies flourish like the grass." - Isaiah 66:14
Looking at this verse, one might ask, "why will my body flourish, if my heart is rejoicing?" It seems as if the reference to "heart shall rejoice" is an interior effect, and that the body flourishing is an essentially disconnected consequence.
This is, however, not at all the case.
Maybe it is an obvious point to say that we are one, a whole person, a unified being, a body and soul that are integrally of the same being, are the same person. Can I say it in any other ways?
This idea, however, seems to typically be treated just as such: "an idea." Yet, it is a truth. The truth. The truth of being. It is also overlooked, misunderstood, flat out ignored or even laughed at. It is habitually taken as a "nice thing" people say, somewhat akin to refernces to "peace and love."
This is a serious problem. Society has been raised on dualism. That is, we are spoon fed the "compartmentalization" mentality from our infancy. Now, sometimes this is a very effective tool for understanding life and its array of complicated aspects. It would be hard to further understand many of the biological systems if we could not separate out each piece/area/section and further observe its processes before going back to the whole. The chip in the paint is that we often do not return to the whole. The tool of reduction-for-the-sake-of-learning has become the habititual-reduction-just-because. This has infiltrated far beyond the realm of the lab, and we find ourselves focusing on someone's kankles instead of the person, or not even hearing the hour conversation we had with our mother because we were also watching television and investigating on facebook.
Once again, let me reiterate that there are many good things that come from this system of study! The problem remains when we leave something separated from its whole. It effectively loses its meaning. What is an acorn if not a future-tree? It is then a round nut that is kicked when walking. But is that really what the seed is? Is that all we would want to claim for its being? It has the potential to produce hundreds of its own kind, given the right circumstances. It can one day be a home for birds and squirrels, or perhaps provide heat, shelter and paper for people. It can be that secret fort for a child, or a couple's favorite place to relax in the summer. None of this is possible to see if we leave the object as an object, and refuse to look for a bigger picture.
Therefore, when we consider the human body, this is the same challenge we are faced with. Will my arm be nothing but an arm. Are these fingers which are flying around on this keyboard (ok, I don't type that fast) really just fingers moving at random? Of course not! They are effectively (that is the word of the day) stating the thoughts that are coming from my brain. Moreover, the thoughts coming from my brain are being fed through the emotions stirring in my heart. And above that, my heart would not be working if I was not receiving adequate amounts of oxygen into my lungs, and my lungs would not be working if my heart was not pumping blood through them to be oxidized, and my brain would not be working if either of those organs failed... I'm not a biology major but I think that's close enough, and you get the point. These are integrated systems we are talking about here! We are so much more than just a torso with some mobile appendages that happens to be able to speak.
To top all of that off, this body-full-of-integrated-systems would be nothing without its soul. I must be both-and. My soul would be non-human if it was not in a human body! And the point remains that my body isn't just filled with a soul and my soul isn't just in a body! I am an embodied soul. That is what I am, who I am, how I am. The mode of existence I possess is an embodied soul. The person I am is an embodied soul. If you were to describe how I exist, what I am, you would say I am an embodied soul.
The dualistic perception we are raised with, again, has its advantages, but most especially when we are dealing with a topic that is so personal (and that is a pun), we need to overcome it. We do not need to throw it out, but if we do not primarily see with a wholistic worldview, we will distinctively sell ourselves and others short. Wholistic, not dualistic. Unified. One person, with a complex existence that is both corporal, finite and mortal, as well as spiritual, infinite and eternal. Complicated? Sure. Impossible? Not at all.
Perhaps it is easier to accept this personalism if you are Christian, since you have hopefully frist accepted that Christ was both God and man, fully human and fully divine. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, "the Incarnation of the Son of God does not mean that Jesus Christ is part God and part man, nor does it imply that he is the result of a confused mixture of the divine and the human. He became truly man while remaining truly God" (CCC 464) and restates it as "Jesus Christ possesses two natures, one divine and the other human, not confused, but united in the one person of God's Son" (CCC 481). If, in faith, you will hold this paradox to be true (which it is), then it should follow that humanity being made up of such an integrated immortal soul and finite body is not hard to accept.
There are perhaps, many reasons why this is so important to discuss, first among them being all of the consequences that suffer the "trickle-down-effect" when we do not understand man in this unity. For example, if an embryo before 4 weeks old does not look much like a "person" and is therefore allowed to be destroyed for embryonic stem cell research, a large part of that decision is probably coming from a failure to see this act as the death of a person and not just a scientific sacrifice for the greater good. Another obvious example is pornography and the voilence to oneself which often accompanies this evil. Clearly no one is pondering what that young lady's name is, who her parents are, what are her likes or dislikes, what her favorite color is, what she studied in college, if she is afraid of spiders or if she loves to swim or if she's actually very good at playing the flute, etc... Nope, she's not a "person" in that sense. She is a body. Or not even a body. She is a part of her body, akin to if I took a picture of my elbow for you and put it here. Wow...you really understand me now. There's my elbow. I mean, seriously? Of course you aren't looking at this woman as a woman, as a person, because those types of images are designed to remove the attention from the whole and focus it on a reduced part. In essence, you reduce not only the fullness of the person in a visual sense but simultaneously you reduce the person in a realistic sense. She is not a "she," but an image.
(And don't give me crap excuses about images that aren't real people, that's nearly worse. Then you're just sanctioning an ongoing habitual mentality that refuses persons their full dignity. Live, real or cartoon, you are still being formed into a habit, into the mentality, that will always look at a person in her reduced, objective and usury sense, and not in her full, subjective and loving sense.)
Ok, sorry, I get heated on the "real life examples." This is exactly why it is so necessary that we "un-train" our minds from our dualistic and reductionist worldviews! C'mon. We've heard that term, "cafeteria catholic," which means that someone picks and chooses the aspects of religion without fully committing to the whole truth of the faith and the lifestyle that inherently comes with it. This is the same with every part of life, every circumstance of the world. Cheesecake to children's education, we will be faced with opportunities to see the world for the fullness that it has been endowed with as a gift from God (and such goodness that is further revealed in Christ's Incarnation, passion, death, ressurection and ascension), or to see it as the world has decided is "easiest" for us to encounter it, which is reduced to its smallest, most empty of meaning aspect. We don't want "empty of meaning"! We reduce not only the physical but the interior as well.
I'll never forget in the movie "Kate and Leopold" when Hugh Jackman is outraged at how Meg Ryan eats her food. There is no enjoyment, no time taken, no real effort. I understand "Kate" completely, since too often I am scarfing down food in between one business and the next, and barely caring what it is I'm eating. Yet, Leopold's character is right on the money! He works hard to perfect the "fixing" of Kate's toaster so that the timer can be set to toast the bread to exactly the desired amount of cooked. He sees an interior, an innate good, in what the bread can be. Objectively, it is bread. Flour, water, all that other stuff (I'm no baker). Subjectively, we're looking at the opportunity to feel full, to feel good, to feel cared for, to receive nourishment, to receive happiness, to experience gratitude. Bread can give gratitude, but it can't give if you won't receive, and you can't receive if you won't allow it to give. Yes? Hope that makes sense.
Ok, long post (what did you expect from me), but let's hit it home one more time - integration!!!!!! Take time to think about this, please. Consider the unity of your person, and of the many things around you. What you do, what you say, the activities that define you, the habits you have formed, the people you care for, the way you live, the passion you hold, the food you eat, the songs you sing - everything effects who you are. Your soul is directly related to all of the world via your body, and your body is inseparable from your soul for all of life. All of the stimuli you receive everyday forms the interior person. Embodied soul.
Let us pray to grow in awareness, in sensitivity, to this truth. Mary, Mother of God, pray for us.
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