One Body, Many Wounds, One Light

Bob has been very dedicated to writing Claiming Sacred Identity: A Six-Week Introduction to Embodied Theology and Beloved Community. His work has invited me to sit with some heavy, human wonderings of my own; I have questions. My mind wandered to the whole of humanity — imagined as one expanded, singular body. One being, one breath, one beating heart. A unified collective of sacred, diverse experience. And I began to ask myself: What does it mean to be just one tiny piece of that whole?

What does it mean to heal the body, when you are just a fragment of it?

To protect it? Witness it? Love it?

What does it mean to simply exist as part of something so large, so complex, so constantly in pain?

When I reduce humanity to a singular body — a divine, living system of interdependent, interconnected parts — I feel overwhelmed. I feel alone. I feel powerless.

And yet I cannot unsee it.

What to do in moments such as these? I listen to Coldplay.

“When you try your best, but you don't succeed

When you get what you want, but not what you need

When you feel so tired, but you just can't sleep

Stuck in reverse

And the tears come streaming down your face

When you lose something you can't replace

When you love someone, but it goes to waste

Could it be worse?”...

I cannot release the idea that we treat our collective body, and the space it inhabits, like a petulant child. We scold it, overindulge it, ignore its needs, demand more from it while giving it less. It's a body plagued with self-inflicted wounds and intentional deficits. Scrapes and bruises built by debt and denial. Gaping, torn-open flesh where violence and grief have made their mark. Truer injuries.

We exist in a pain cycle — or so it seems by our reactions — as if we are an unlucky, cursed hypochondriac: always aching, never healing, always flinching, rarely addressing the source.

We tend to our collective wounds — sometimes — if they’re simple enough, palatable enough, politically convenient enough. Or if their healing serves another “body part” more equipped to speak, act, dominate. The well-resourced. The stronger. The louder. We slap on a bandage where there should be sutures. And we allow our paper cuts to fester — all while holding sanitizer and salve in our own hands.

“There is one body, but it has many parts. But all its many parts make up one body.”

— 1 Corinthians 12:12

We either celebrate the parts that function smoothly — or we condemn, ignore, or deny the parts that don't.

We ask, “How does the eyebrow relate to the knee?”

What use is the liver to the wrist?

What of the skin to the bones?

What do we do with the deep longing — to connect it all? To integrate it?

To make the body whole, healthy, seen, and loved?

When our human body had fewer parts — fewer people, fewer systems, fewer demands — was it simpler? Did healing feel more possible? Or do we now hold more capacity than ever to meet the body’s needs together? More hands, more hearts, more cells that know what it is to hurt and still hope.

Maybe we aren’t meant to fix the body — like a machine in need of parts.

Maybe we are called to heal — like a soul in need of attention, of love, of presence.

Maybe we’re not broken — just unmet. Unseen. Disconnected from ourselves and each other.

…“And high up above or down below

When you're too in love to let it go

But if you never try, you'll never know

Just what you're worth

Lights will guide you home

And ignite your bones

And I will try to fix you.”

I may not be able to fix the body.

But if I cannot fix it — maybe I can see it.

If I cannot heal it all — maybe I can love one small part back to life.

Maybe I am a photoreceptor cell — one among millions — catching even a flicker of light and translating it into vision.

My role is small, but essential. I help the body see. I help it move toward the light.

Toward healing. Toward wholeness.

Toward love.

If each of us becomes a cell tuned toward light — toward justice, compassion, tenderness — then we might begin to illuminate the path forward. Not just for ourselves, but for the body that is all of us.

One light.

One love.

One body.

Lyrics from “Fix You” by Coldplay. Written by Guy Berryman, Jonny Buckland, Will Champion, and Chris Martin. Published by Universal Music Publishing Group.