Mudballs That Glitter: More on the Body/Spirit

Near the opening of her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston refers to human beings as “mudballs that glitter.” For over thirty years I have carried this image with me as a kind of shorthand for the spirit-flesh embranglement that we call “human being.”

Hurston’s image came afresh to me last week as I was walking along the rocky northern shore of the Atlantic Ocean. I looked up out of my reverie and everything was shining. Everything. Even the rocks. I looked more closely. It wasn’t reflected light. The grains of sand, the waves, the seaweed, the skate purses, the rocks weren’t reflecting the light of the sun; they were shining from within, with their “own” light, a light answering the light shining from the sun, a resounding antiphony of light. I looked more closely. It was as if everything was made of light, formed of light—not simply the sentient beings, but every being, even the rocks, and I remembered my Ojibwe friends in Minnesota arguing (against the vocal disbelief of other students) that rocks, too, are alive.

Even the rocks on this beach I was walking through were alive. I could see, feel the light enlivening them. That light, that energy, that creative power, that palpable generativity was one, One shining in and through them all, each separate being. The shapes and colors and density of each individual shining was no more than and no less than a declaration of the infinite variety of the One that was even now bringing it into being, fashioning it, sustaining it, accompanying it faithfully on its journey of coming into being and perishing.

Walking through this riot of light, I thought of the many circles of mystics from all religious traditions—both orthodox and heterodox, both those I am at home with and those whose dualistic or other doctrines are far from my experience of the world—who have witnessed to the light in the creation. The Hebrew scriptures (Psalm 97:12) say “Light is sown for the righteous,” leading many who came after to cultivate and reap that light. Gnostics of many sorts speak of light/spirit trapped in the matter of our created world. The Zoroastrians focused on the path to a world all of light through purity and righteousness. Augustine reports that the Manichees ate cucumbers and melons to imbibe the great amounts of light trapped in these foods. Lurianic Kabbalists speak of the breaking of the vessels at creation, which scattered sparks of light throughout the created universe, and of repairing the world (tikkun olam) by gathering up these scattered sparks. The Hasids, too, speak of our task as human beings as finding the One everywhere one looks and gathering the light shining in all that exists.

Whatever the differences in their worldview—dualistic, non-dualistic, theistic, nontheistic, atheistic—these mystics have seen something, something real in our world, a vision that often bears fruit in a moral life that recognizes the connection among all things and all peoples, and that draws one away from forgetfulness and self-absorption and cruelty and toward humility, justice, and compassion. This insight, whatever its (sometimes wild) accompanying imagery or concepts, invites human beings, beings of flesh, mudballs, to live in such a way that we, too, shine. It invites us to remove the veils that cover that light in us, to stop hiding the light in us from others, to stop trying to extinguish the light shining in us because we cannot bear it, or cannot bear its often confusing and disturbing coexistence with our fleshly selves, to become more and more transparent so that it shines through us the way it shines through the rocks on the ocean shore, through all being, gracefully, naturally, joyfully, for anyone walking by with eyes to see. To become not simply mudballs that glitter, but mudballs that shine.

Even the rocks are shining
Shining with the glory of you

Passing through
from this angle and this one and
this
lost in ourselves
we miss their offering
speckled, pocked, pooled
scarified with light
alive
declaring the wonder of being

If these, too, can shine,
why not this battered tent of flesh?

Are Mystics Anti-Body? Befriending the Body-Self

The meaning of the body or the body-self has fascinated me for decades. Perhaps because I am female, and the culture that nurtured me never let me forget that for me, existing in that time in that place, the body meant everything, that I could not escape the limits of my body. Perhaps because I am one of those people born feeling at ease in the body, at peace with it—a lovely genetic inheritance. Perhaps because I experience emotions in my body strongly, so the fundamental integration of body-self and what is not body-self was always apparent to me. Perhaps the body intrigued me because early on I experienced blessing through the natural world, its beauty, its grace, its calm, its unselfconscious joy of being, its vastness, its inclusion of me in a larger whole, its oneness with and in what was beyond. Perhaps because I always wondered what the Paul meant in his first letter to the Corinthians when he wrote, "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body," (1 Cor. 6:19-20).

No matter the reason, I was intensely interested in the body-self, disposed to like it, and aware of its intimate relationship with the spirit or spirit-self. That’s why many of the metaphors and theories of the body, especially in relation to the spirit, that I encountered did not appeal to me or seem true. For example, I found the Neoplatonic view of the body as the prison house or tomb of the soul insulting. The Gnostic view of the body (and all matter) as evil, a hard shell one must destroy to let the light free, seemed an even greater affront to the beauty and gift of the body and its dearness to the spirit. This put me off mysticism and mystics for a long time: I thought all mystics denigrated the body-self in this way, to elevate the soul or spirit, and I wanted nothing to do with what I felt was a false view of the oneness of being.

Contemporary views of the body among those who are not mystics were no more appealing to me. For many people, often those suffering illness, injury, or the pain of oppressive labor, the body is more a burden to be endured or the intimate companion who has turned traitor and betrayed one. For others, it is a mere hindrance, an obstacle to one’s success, while for others it is but a tool, a vehicle to accomplish one’s desires—nothing more, nothing less. Of course for some, it is the pride and goal of their existence, their riches, their identity, their all—until it fails them. For many human beings, consciously or unconsciously, the body is the enemy one battles every day—that which inexorably drags one toward decay and death.

Recently I came across a metaphor for the body and its relationship to the spirit that surprised me with its freshness and depth. In his book In Search of the Hidden Treasure: A Conference of Sufis, a conversation among Sufi masters of all ages, Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan offers to the gathering of mystics this view of the physical body: Think of it as your favorite tunic, he counsels. You put it on, you take it off, you put it on again. You wear it next to your skin. It grows softer and more flowing with age. It absorbs your scent, conforms to your shape. Daily you care for it, nourish it, wash it, mend it, fold it hand it up carefully when you take it off—all lovingly, for without it, there would be no life, no action in this world.

For the first time in many years my heart stood at attention when I heard this original and rich, rich metaphor for the body-self. It says, we do not denigrate or try to escape the body. We do not mourn it as a burden or treat it as a mere tool. Nor do we identify with it. We care for it lovingly, delighting in it and grateful for it as a gift from our Beloved (my interpretation).

For me, the body-self is a gift to treasure, the dearest of friends. Friendships are complex—they encompass many ways of relating, all grounded in love, care, and respect, and they elicit constant gratitude for the joy and support they bring to our lives. For many years I have said that when I come to the end of my life, I hope that I have a chance to thank my body, my friend, properly, with love, before we part. Thank it for carrying me through crises, for supporting me every moment, for opening me to possibilities otherwise closed to me, for its faithfulness to me, its forgiveness of my neglect and abuse of it, its acceptance of me, its refusal to let go of its embrace of my spirit even when I tried to cut it away completely and finally in some vain attempt at transcendence, for delivering to me a son and a daughter, for enabling me to experience so much joy. One day before then I will write an ode to my body, this unsung wonder of a companion that I so often take for granted.

Perhaps this metaphor of body-self as friend is close to what Paul meant when he reminded the gathered community in Corinth that the body was a temple of the spirit. It is a dwelling place one enters for a time, a sacred space in which spirit encounters spirit. We must care for it lovingly and inhabit it in gratitude.

Some mystics (and non-mystics) are anti-body. Certainly not all. And some know and love the body-self as friend.

How does one talk about God?

Out of silence. In order to talk about God without speaking total nonsense and causing trouble, we need to cultivate silence. The mystics of many traditions remind us—from Dionysius the Areopagite to Amma Theodora to Maimonides to Meister Eckhart to Hildegarde of Bingen to Krishnamurti to Rav Isaac Kook—we know nothing about God. And as the eight century mystic Rabi’a teaches,

Since no one really knows anything about God,

those who think they do are just

troublemakers.

(Daniel Ladinsky, Love Poems to God, 27)

Whatever and whoever God is, the reality of God ultimately lies beyond our grasp. We with our limited minds and hearts cannot comprehend it. We cannot contain it in concepts, images, or words, however complex or evocative they may be. It will always break the bonds we place around it. The most appropriate response then is silence.

And yet. And yet we must speak of it, for this reality is that in which we live and move and have our being. How can we, the creatures born to consciousness and language, not talk of this reality that impinges on and supports every moment of our existence? Like many mystics, Rav Shneur Zalman of Ladi experienced the power of this paradox:

The rav asked a disciple who had just entered his room: “Moshe, what do we mean when we say ‘God’”? The disciple was silent. The rav asked him a second and third time. Then he said: “Why are you silent?”
     “Because I do not know.”
     “Do you think I know?” said the Rav. “But I must say it, for it is so, and therefore I must say it: He is definitely there, and except for him nothing is definitely there—and this is He.”                (Buber, Tales of the Hasidim I:263)

To live this paradox of silence and talking about God is the goal. All talk of God must emerge out of silence, be limned by silence, and return to silence.
What does this look like in practice? Cultivating a life of prayer and meditation beyond words in which one experiences the boundlessness of The Beyond. Taming the tongue so that one speaks only that which is necessary, straining to say that which one does not understand. Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan quotes this advice on speaking from a dervish, “’Only speak when you realize that you can’t say what you want to say. If you think you can say it, then don’t say it.’” (The Call of the Dervish, 30) In short, make humility your practice. Speaking of God out of and with silence is part of the prophet Micah’s (6:8) counsel to “walk humbly with your God.”