Editorial
A House of God
The atmosphere in the newborn intensive care unit was hushed, the light dim. My son Sam, one week old, lay naked on a padded warming bed, covered with a mess of tubes and wires. IV lines in his hands and feet, monitor leads on his chest, a ventilator tube down his throat—all connecting him to a wall of blinking, humming, beeping machinery.
I sat at Sam’s bedside with my friend Peggy, explaining all that was being done to keep him alive while his lungs finished growing. “Look at all this,” I said, gesturing toward the hulking pile of equipment. “Isn’t it amazing what medical technology can do these days?”
“Yeah,” she said, “but look at him.” She pointed to Sam’s sleeping body on the bed. “All this machinery needed just to help him breathe—think of what a healthy body can do all on its own. That’s even more amazing.”
I gazed at Sam. His perfect skin glowed with life, casting a rosy shimmer in the air surrounding him. Peggy was right—nothing made by mortals could rival this. But she was also wrong. This little body, I suddenly knew, did not function all on its own. It was the power of God that blushed his skin pink, that pumped his heart, that swelled every scrap of him with life. And that same power filled my body too.
The realization hit me hard. Ever since third-grade tap dance class, when my feet failed to shuffle-hop-step like everyone else’s, I had regarded my body as an instrument of embarrassment. A hindrance. I couldn’t hit a softball or turn a cartwheel. I lumbered like an elephant in aerobics class. I hit puberty late, then quickly developed curves in all the wrong places. It wasn’t until I was pregnant for the first time that I finally felt my body was doing something right. But even then, my appreciation was based on how it looked (a firm stomach, at last!) and what it produced (a baby). I had never considered that my body was amazing, in and of itself. I had never recognized the presence of God within me.
“Know ye not that ye are the temple of God?” (1 Cor. 3:16). We quote this often, and for good reason. The truth of it is so astounding that it bears repeating again and again: God, although housed in a body of His own, dwells within ours. King Benjamin taught that God “preserves [us] from day to day . . . lending [us] breath . . . even supporting [us] from one moment to another” (Mosiah 2:21). Divine spirit, awareness, and influence permeate every living cell.
This issue of Segullah is devoted to writings about the mortal body, this tabernacle of clay and light that houses our spirits. These poems and stories do not gloss over the difficulties of life in these tabernacles. A body hurts. It spills messy fluids: milk, blood, vomit, pee, sweat. It reflects all the churnings of our mind and heart in painful, visible ways. It rarely looks the way we wish it would. It sickens and breaks down, like a fickle automobile, sometimes failing us when we need it most. And it is fated for death. So vulnerable and flawed is a mortal body that we may be tempted to think of it only as a liability.
But these writings also remind us that the body is a gift. That womb with its bloody cycles of death is also the cradle of life. Those little toddler bodies which spew fluids of all kinds also provide the most exquisite snuggles. Our own flesh, even the flabby, doughy flesh we often despise, is a soft solace for others. Our hands which wither and wrinkle with age are powerful instruments of expression, creativity, and service. And most importantly, every part of us is a receptacle for God’s spirit. The very movement of our bodies, no matter what their size or shape, can be a prayer.
Let us celebrate these bodies of ours—these pudgy, bony, stinky, sensuous, frail, mighty, beautiful tabernacles we’ve been given. And let us give thanks to the God who granted us these bodies, who sustains them every minute of our lives, who one day will raise them from the grave, whole, shining with glory, each an immortal dwelling place for the Most High.
Kathy is editor-in-chief of Segullah.
