Here in the West, infused in Christian culture (whether one practices Christianity or not) we have done a bad job of dealing with the fact that we are critters, specifically mammals; messy warmbloods that gestate our young, give birth, and nurse. (Christianity also has issues with women and the two might just be connected.) When your culture is intertwined from a religion that gets ooged out by menstruation, sex, or really any reminder that we are mammalian you are going to end up with a problem dealing with creatureliness.
Obsession with unending youth? Dislike of body hair, impossible standards for body shape and size? It goes deeper of course, from criticism over kink at pride to an unwillingness to admit that human sexuality is incredibly diverse. The Christian narrative that is embedded in our cultural narrative is a very specific duality in which the soul and all things religious are holy and good; and the body and “the world” are bad, fallen, and not to be trusted.
In such a world any hint of being an embodied creature is a thing to be suspicious of, to be overcome or risen above; not good news to be embraced. This particular hangup of Christianity is something many movements in the church are pushing back against, especially as people of color and indigenous Christians begin doing the work of decolonizing their religion. But that isn’t our focus today.
The simple truth that we are mammalian creatures is deeply good news. It means, dear friends, that we are most definitely not in charge of anything beyond our own reach. The sun does not rise or set on our say so. The world is not ordered for our comfort or punishment. In fact we are simply one more part of a vast web of life that has existed for billions of years before our first ancestors and will roll on after we are long gone.
And that truth can be incredibly freeing (if we let it). But it brings with it responsibility as well. Because if we are not in fact the pinnacles of creation but merely parts of it then our exploitation and abuse of our fellow beings, and the world on which we all depend is inexcusable.
Someone recently asked a question “what do you do when you feel far from God/the Divine?” And my answer was: I remind myself that I am a creature. I get my bare feet in the dirt, wiggle my toes down into the loam. I sit with the oak and maple behind our home and just breathe, giving them the gift of my carbon dioxide and breathing in the gift of their oxygen. I watch the rabbit and squirrel busy about their lives and remember that even if you have to go back millions of years we share a little furry ancestor, that we are cousins.
I watch the clouds scudding overheard, part of a vast and complex weather system that spans the globe and keeps it habitable. I watch the moon rise, ghostly in the bright blue sky and remember that every human who has ever lived has watched her make the same transit. I remember that I am flesh, and that this flesh is good. This life is good, even filled as it is with pain and suffering. And I remember that I am not alone in it.
Even when the Divine seems impossible, distant, absent. This web of creatures, this improbable dance of sunshine and evaporation, wind, and soil bacteria keeps us all breathing. And this is enough, eventually, among the leaves of the apple tree, the unfurling petals of the water iris the Divine steps back through the veil, or maybe I do, and we are friends again.
When we remember that we creatures we can begin to deconstruct the harmful narratives around bodies that have been woven into our culture. Women’s bodies (never the right size or shape), people of color’s bodies (never the right color, shape, or type of hair), disabled bodies (outside the “norm”), LGBTQIA+ bodies (what even is the norm?). We have in our wander away from creatureliness made being human into a quest to become a marble statue. Perfect and utterly impossible.
My own body is now middle aged. She is soft in places she used to be svelt. She is rounded in places that used to be flat. Parts ache when I over do it (kneeling on hard floors to cutout a fabric pattern is no longer going to work I’m afraid). But in middle age I have learned to inhabit my body and to appreciate her. And it has been creatures who have helped me do that.
The elderly border collie who nevertheless still has to hang back and wait for me on runs (humans are slow). My stout little Spanish pony so finely attuned to my body that a squeeze of the hand, a lift of the chest, a swing of my hip speaks more than words. They have helped teach me what my body can do, not thinking, just muscle, tendon, and bone working together in magical concert.
And middle age has taught me to listen to my body, to slow down when things ache, to rest when I’m tired. I begin to unlearn the toxic messages that rest is lazy, that pleasure is selfish, that beauty is defined by others.
When we grasp our creatureliness and won’t let go of it many of our assumptions have to change. The way we view and care for our selves as messy mammals, the controversy of women breastfeeding in public (controversy? Babies need to eat!), to the morality of our food. By which I mean the way we have abstracted food from something our bodies need, and deserve, to ways we try to conform those bodies to outside ideals and make choices about the food we eat totally apart from our bodies reactions to said food. (Whether that means denying yourself the chocolate cake your body loves because “it isn’t good for you” or ignoring the environmental impact of “ethical” food trends.)
In the end we are not abstract beings, we are far too complex for that. And our bodies are not shells to be abandoned as quickly as possible to get to the good part. What if, beloveds, we believed this was the good part, or at least a good part and sought out a life filled with creaturely joy? For ourselves, and all those we share air with?
