​The Conversion of Saint Paul, Caravaggio, 1600

Nancy Pearcey's characteristically distinguished research integrity doesn't fail to deliver. She demonstrates through our Western literary history of changing public attitudes that led us to the current culture war between the sexes. Tracing the evidence from a dramatic shift brought on by the Industrial Revolution to the damaging ideas of Darwinism, a clear pathway is revealed to have had detrimental impact on our relationships today. Pearcey illustrates that the goal doesn't have to be in focusing on the power struggles to address the conflict and inequality but by acknowledging God's original design for equity and partnership between men and women. The idea that both are made in the image of God pushes back against the current constructed narrative to reconcile us for the common good. As a mother of two young boys, Pearcey's book offers a clear and positive approach to address toxic masculinity in our society. She is presenting a book as resolute and affirmative fuel for mothers and fathers to unite in rejecting the dominate culture's toxic message to our sons that they are doomed to be toxic themselves. I couldn't put it down. ​

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that–pierced–died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

Years ago, I ran across this website for mail order pecans from Koinonia Farm. In exploring the website, I realized that this grower’s co-op has a much richer history than I was aware of. I have bought and sent pecans, chocolate, and coffee from the farm for years now whenever I needed a gift idea with a richer story. 
 
I even found a frisbee-like, woven disc made by the Maya of Guatemala on their store website. Not only is this toy creatively beautiful, I use it in my Franklin Method body work to lend visual aid on the function of the hip bone rhythms while walking. A participant can see the pattern rotating and connect to something familiar in how our femur moves within the hip socket while walking, etc. 

The body is an important and integrated part of the total person. Neglected or poor bodily and mental health go hand in hand. Dancing against the reality of this notion as whole persons has led us down the road to a shadow of human interrelation and existence. We no longer know how to relate to one another due to a distorted view of the body as separate from who we are as persons. 

Jan. 23, 2023 - The Culture Translator
Rev. Jonathan Lee Walton called out social and spiritual alienation as root causes of this trend, saying, “We are normalizing diseases of despair like loneliness, addiction, and gun violence. Social media, Zoom church, remote work, and virtual reality may be ‘convenient,’ but they are morally anemic substitutes for human connection.”
 
We were never meant to live this way: treating our bodies as if they are instruments to be mastered or property to do with as we wish. We have an innate need for relationship, and it is best experienced as embodied beings in relationship with one another. 

Further developments of these thoughts to come....

There is so much contention around conversations on race, justice, and historical consequences that it can be very discouraging to listen in on many civic and social circles without being disheartened. I just keep thinking that there has got to be folks that are speaking for clearly and more charitably on these topics than I am running across. I do think it is difficult to enter the conversation. If you have not listened long enough or done some reading of your own, the chances are higher that you will insert your voice, receive pushback, and then run away from the scene of the crime crying foul. There’s no need for continuing in this sort of unhelpful cycle repeatedly. It just makes us fragile. 
 
This said, I was delighted to come across a tweet from Lisa Spencer.  
Lisa Spencer @theochick recently posted on Twitter: 

"Newsflash: you can actually be honest about the history of racial discrimination in this country w/o buying into or promoting the prevailing secular ideologies that do nothing but pit groups against each other. You can actually be aware that racism still exists & be against imposing it on everything esp. when other factors can be involved & caution against redefinitions that essentially erase the individual & their agency. You can actually appreciate diverse cultures & diversity w/o promoting the kind of multiculturalism that eliminates certain groups from the equation & creates hierarchies of power as the prevailing secular ideologies promote. You can actually love the big beautiful world that God created full of diverse ppl & cultures while also decrying ways in which “culture” can be the driver of how everything operates. This is why as Christians we need to avoid swift, careless & uncharitable charges just because one either addresses racism and/or welcomes diversity or speaks against secular ideologies. What’s the framework in operation? Let’s start there."
 
Lisa writes a blog at TheoThoughts. As of today, her most recent blog post is dated Oct. 10, 2022 and titled, “Because its really about people supremacy”.

​I appreciate Lisa’s clarity of thought and her commitment to being present in the conversations being had, even if social media is the most anti-social place to have them. It still seems important not to totally abandon this arena.  So, if you are in the market for this kind of robust thinking on the issue of racial justice, racial reconciliation, social change, and critical thinking, I would suggest heading over to her blog to take a gander. 
 
Also, if you want to listen in on conversations with a more charitable approach, I would recommend requesting membership in George Yancey's Collaborative Conversations private Facebook page: Collaborative Conversations and Race. His book, Beyond Racial Gridlock and Beyond Racial Division were very helpful in thinking more deeply about a better model for approaching conversations about racial conflict, alienation, and viable possibilities for solutions.  (This is Yancey, with an ‘e’, the sociology professor, not to be confused with Yancy, no ‘e’, the philosopher.)  Collaborative Conversations is a working model, not a guaranteed formula. However, the folks in these conversations are way more committed to charitable dialogue than I have found elsewhere. It’s worth a step in.  

Focus was consistently given to how he did not fit into his school’s mold. I mean, the very notion of an educational philosophy that supports the thriving of all children, no matter how they are wired, manufactured ridiculous in this season of our lives. My response as a mother and as a maker was to create a dance piece for him; to visually show him that we could make place for him to thrive as a family and that I had confidence there were other professionals and laymen in our community that would join us. 
 
Improvisation is a dance form that is open to simple experiments of the ways in which the body moves or the depth and complexity of human relationship.  Kent De Spain calls it the fundamental relationship between intention and action. The original students were required to challenge their experiences of dance training to more fully embrace the body that God has created for them as a moving entity and as a vehicle of human connection and meaning to become more practiced at how we create in relationship to one another. 
 
We touch, we connect, we experiment, we empathize, we support, we make meaning, we create, we play. Is this not the way we process life in these bodies of ours? 
 
Image inspiration came from Simone Forti’s, Huddle, a dance sculpture where you could watch people climb and others support that climbing. If only we could all feel that space of being able to climb and feel that support. You'll find a link to Forti's work here. 
 
A quiet rebellion against individualism, The Art of Huddling is a commentary on the ways in which our society scraps to live in individualism when we were built for community.