The Practice Of Wearing Skin

In An Altar In the World Barbara Brown Taylor writes of “the practice of wearing skin” as a spiritual practice.  Granted, we don’t think of it so much in those terms.  We think of spirituality more in the intellectual sense, something played out in the mind, not in the physical body.  But, se writes: “In an age of information overload…the last thing any of us needs is more information about God.  We need the practice of incarnation….  Not more about  God.  More God.”  In his last chance to meet with his disciples before dying on the cross, Jesus didn’t fill their heads with information, he didn’t recite the Ten Commandments, repeat the Beatitudes, or, as far as we know, the Lord’s Prayer.  He sat down amongst them, had a meal, and washed their feet.

It is, of course, much safer to live out spirituality in the head, but the actions we take once the thinking is done, that is where “the rubber meets the road.” As Taylor notes, “here we sit, with our souls tucked away in this marvelous luggage, mostly insensible to the ways in which every spiritual practice begins with the body.”