To bring body and spirit into harmony creates peace for the individual and for the community a wellspring of love. View the study sheet here. Watch the recording here.
The mortality of our body chases after us from the day we are born. As very young children we are mostly unaware of this intimate of ours. As adolescents we may laugh at its presumed power over us. At some point we notice its brooding presence…and we begin to run, thinking to extend the distance between us. If our years are long enough, we finally turn and face it; and, depending on how we have lived along the way, we may greet it with a contemptuous sneer, grapple with it in one final contest, or embrace it as our most familiar and oldest companion.
Our body is but one of the vessels animated to life when we are born. Another is our spirit. In that dimension dwell seas of imagination, swells of mystery, and a sense of…something beyond ourselves. Often body and spirit seem to be in contest with one another. One proclaims to have a unique stake in the world. The other whispers tales of unity with all of existence. Is it possible to achieve harmony between them?
The Israelites, released from enslavement, continue their journey toward true freedom. Along the way God as master artist has been mentoring them as apprentices to become journeymen in the craft of life as creation. The Mishkan building project was an exercise in how to design one’s interior life as a beautiful expression of holiness. This week the lesson addresses how to do the same with one’s bodily life, to don our physical life in dignity and beauty. To bring body and spirit into harmony creates peace for the individual and for the community a wellspring of love.
Joseph Zrihen is a famed Israeli epidemiologist. He has been one of the most visible experts providing advice and analysis in Israel during the pandemic crisis. He is also an artist. Zrihen describes himself as “one man with two passions: medicine and art.” He is, he says, a “doctor of the body and a painter of the soul.” To bring both into focus is an endowment of “honor and beauty” (Exodus 28:2).
Join us here at 7:00 pm (PST) Thursday, February 10 as we explore the beauty of attuning body and spirit.
