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Spirituality • Theology Curiosity

Aug 17, 2020
1 min

Video: What is Theology of the Body?

What is the body's relationship to the Divine? How do our bodies reveal the Divine to ourselves and to each other? How can you involve your body in your spiritual practice? I sat down with physical therapist and women's health coach Beth Anne Fisher over Zoom to discuss one of my favorite subjects: that alchemical connection between body and spirit. Together, we examine the ways in which we can recognize, acknowledge, and include the body in daily life. In this video we discu

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Nourished in Darkness: Tolerating Advent

Saint Gibson

Dec 11, 2019
3 min

Nourished in Darkness: Tolerating Advent

Historically, I've chafed against Advent. As much as I love Christmas, It's hard for me to observe a season devoted to light when darkness has so much to teach us, and gathering to celebrate prophecies fulfilled can feel hollow when there is still so much broken in the world. My memories of my two Decembers spent away at seminary are shadowy and fraught, despite punctuating moments of joy. Whether I was cramming for exams, trudging through the slush to chapel services, welcom

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Rachel Parsons

Dec 3, 2019
2 min

Animate Dust: Poems for Embodiment

This month the Fratres Dei team got together to compile poetry of our own creation about our experiences with embodied spirituality. We invite you to curl up and enjoy, and take a few moments to explore your own body's relationship with the Sacred. We also welcome you to leave a comment with your own poetry or musings. To My Body By Rachel Parsons, Founder Holy ash, animate dust Stunted conductor, demented cache I smell the winter in your nose, carry you from my bed, scan the

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Kara Francisca Resneki

Sep 18, 2019
3 min

Sometimes, Things Get Better

Sometimes it takes days, weeks, or months to see you’re beyond your limits. Sometimes it takes just as long to realize you’ve made a mistake. You learn about work-life balance. You realize the hours you work are isolating. You feel regularly taken advantage of. And you find it difficult, with everything else going on, to look for a way out. You’ve been at the first job you could find in a new city for over a year now. You worked at a different branch for four years before tha

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The Body in Stillness (and why I'm very bad at it)

Caroline Crook

Jul 24, 2019
4 min

The Body in Stillness (and why I'm very bad at it)

It happens every single time. My mom drags me to her weekly Vinyasa Flow, or one of my friends has a coupon for a free class. I lumber my way through the poses, peek at other people for notes, realize that’s a huge mistake since they’re all practically levitating past me, and quickly return to figuring out what “legs shoulder-width apart” means. Finally, we all lay down. The instructor begins guiding us through the cool-down, saying things like “Consciously relax every indivi

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Ritual, Rosaries, and Prayers Written in Flesh

Saint Gibson

May 30, 2019
5 min

Ritual, Rosaries, and Prayers Written in Flesh

Hello wonder-workers and spiritual sojourners! It’s Saint, Fratres Dei’s social media manager and sometimes-theologian, back again to share a bit about my journey towards a more embodied faith practice. I was raised in a spiritual tradition almost entirely bereft of embodied ritual. This wasn’t necessarily my parent’s fault: I was very fortunate to grow up in a household that was supportive of both my Christian faith and of my asking tough questions. My parents always support

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Rachel Parsons

Jan 28, 2019
3 min

Body Scan Meditation and the Divine

The year was...2016. I was working three part-time jobs: cramming my feet into high heels on the way to hospice chaplain visits and spiritual direction sessions by day and tripping over my master's degree to the closing shift at Caribou Coffee by night. While chain coffee bar backing is certainly one of the easier food service professions, anyone who has worked in such a position knows that the job is 0.05% espresso, 20% colorful customer personalities, and 79.95% cleaning up

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Dancing Like Everyone’s Watching; or How to Let Your Body Be a Body

Rachel Parsons

Nov 27, 2018
3 min

Dancing Like Everyone’s Watching; or How to Let Your Body Be a Body

Then Miriam the prophet, Aaron’s sister, took a timbrel in her hand, and all the women followed her, with timbrels and dancing. -Exodus 15:20-21 Little high school and college Rachel Ann liked to dance. A lot. I danced in theatre class between assignments to “Moving Clocks Run Slow” by We Were Promised Jetpacks. I danced in the car to “Sprawl II” by Arcade Fire. I danced on the roof of my university to “While You Wait for the Others” by Grizzly Bear. If I found a deliciously

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The Literal Body of Christ's Literal Body of Christ and the Literal Body of Christ

Rachel Parsons

Jul 7, 2018
3 min

The Literal Body of Christ's Literal Body of Christ and the Literal Body of Christ

I talk a lot about bodies. I cannot overemphasize the inherently physical nature of our humanity and the importance of living into our human bodies as our essential selves. In this post I want to talk about how embodied spirituality is not an activity we perform apart from God but rather in the imitation of God. In other words, our physicality does not separate us from the Holy; it makes us more like it. As a disclaimer, I would not consider myself a proper "Christian" with a

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More of C. S. Lewis’s Greatest Heresies; or How to Not Hate Your Body

Rachel Parsons

Apr 24, 2018
2 min

More of C. S. Lewis’s Greatest Heresies; or How to Not Hate Your Body

Some days I find myself in euphoric rapture about the miracle of my physical being and in profound gratitude that I hail from a theological tradition that affirms the body as an essential component of human selfhood, and then I’ll see C. S. Lewis quoted, “You don’t have a soul; you are a soul. You have a body.” Sigh. Don’t throw your pipes away just yet, 20-something Christian guys. Mr. Lewis never actually said this. It was in fact his predecessor in the realm of theological

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