The Wisdom of the Body

Rev. Linda Simmons

The Wisdom of the Body

February 1, 2015

There was no internet access at the Nantucket High School where Gary and I took refuge during the storm when we could see our breaths at the parsonage. I hailed Mike Cozort, the superintendent who was walking about checking on folks, and even his user name and password did not create the wonderful magic of google popping up.

Knowing I needed to write a sermon, I toyed with internet usernames and passwords for a while, typing in every permutation of what Mike told me was the guest log in.

I finally shut the computer in frustration and looked around the high school cafeteria. Everyone else there had already given up on internet. Phones were down, people were talking to each other, children were playing quietly, babies suckling, parents chatting, games being invented.

At first, we all stayed at our tables: latinos in the left corner, white folks in the right corner. But as we grew hungry and restless, we crossed these invisible but clear lines. Someone came in with a pot of hot chocolate and some biscuits. A latino man came by, Would you like some? Handing cups and biscuits into our eager hands.

A man from the opposing corner had some cake to share and he traversed the space offering each of us some, cutting slices smaller and smaller so there was enough.

I saw a cartoon recently that had Jesus on a rock handing out loaves and fishes. The crowd says, Is that bread gluten free? Is that fish farm raised? I can’t eat that, I’m a vegan.

When we were hungry in that high school before the food arrived that would feed us and many more for the next 24 hours, we crossed our dietary lines as well. I was eating cookies and cake with the best of them.

I watched us in that cafeteria, displaced, hungry, warmish but not toasty, needing a flashlight to get to the bathroom down a long corridor, I watched us all and saw so many who were smiling, kissing babies, patting dogs, comforting each other and I thought: The human spirit is extraordinary.

We all know stories from events much more harrowing than this one about the human spirit, stories of refugees sacrificing for each other, of fire workers running into burning buildings, of neighbors putting themselves between another and danger.

And again comes that sense of the human spirit, this elusive quality that allows us to respond outside of our biology, to do what is not in our best interests, what does not serve us first, what is not instinctual.

Sherwin Nuland was a clinical professor of surgery at Yale University and also taught bioethics and medical history. He was a practical surgeon for 30 years. He wrote a book called, The Wisdom of the Body. In it he postulates that the human spirit is an outcome of our biological make up, that it lives while we live and dies when we die.

Nuland says that our biology offers us life, survival, instinct, and protection. Most of this we cannot and do not control consciously, like when we hear tires’ screech which causes our eardrum to vibrate and through a series of chain reactions, pulls our feet off of the pavement and onto the curb. Amen for instincts.

Or like when a foreign bodies enter our cells and they surround it to discern whether it is friend or foe. If the latter, an attack ensues that makes warfare seem tame.

Nuland writes of the surveillance the cells keep up, the urge toward homeostasis, balance, equilibrium that nonetheless requires a high capacity of flexibility in order to maintain. A cell will do anything it can to regain stasis, to neutralize an offending agent, to keep the body functioning at optimal capacity.

This constant changing in order to stay balanced, this constant shuffling, this high degree of instability needed to maintain stability, is the basis of our biological survival.

This surveillance and alertness and attempt to destroy what will harm the organism, we see reflected around us in the way we set up governments and social systems. And yet Nuland says that seeking security, stability, the removal of what is foreign, arises from our biology what Nuland calls the human spirit.

Nuland writes, “Reason, conscience and morality are examples of the ways in which our inherent protoplasmic workings have been fortunately exploited by us to develop a philosophical edifice that far transcends the requirements of survival and reproduction- achieving something unconfined by the restrictions of instinct alone or the mere necessities of ongoing cellular life.”

In other words, our biology has allowed us to move beyond our biology and into the realms of the philosophical and ethical, into the terrain of love.

Think for instance of the physical attractions we have all experienced, how based in biology is the need to couple, how set up we are by hormones and the body’s need to reproduce, to be driven into physical embrace. No where in our biology is love mandated. The heart toward which so much intention has been assigned, pumps blood alone. Love arises from what we are calling here our biological spirit, our fleshy spirit, which seeks satisfaction beyond stasis, beyond balance, beyond what can be known. And surely love is anything but stasis!

Sherwin Nuland interviewed on the radio show On Being by Krista Tippett said,

"There are pathways in the brain that have survival value. So when a stimulus comes in and the brain has 50, 000 ways of responding to it, some of those are for survival.

And the human brain, in classical evolutionary pattern, will pick the one that is healthiest, that gives greatest pleasure. What gives greater pleasure than a spiritual sense? So I think of this as natural selection in an emotional form, and I think it is almost like a choice. Because when you're talking about selection in the brain, there are processes of choice. The brain has a way of evaluating what is best for the organism. And what is best for the organism is not just survival and reproduction but beauty, and aesthetic sense. Some stimuli enhance the richness of our lives and the brain choses those.”

I love these thoughts. They come into my consciousness and bring hope, pleasure, joy. They offer me the possibility of moving beyond my biology and evolving. We all know the saying “Virtue is its own reward” and this work suggests it is quite literally, quite cellularlly true. The brain choses beauty for its sheer pleasure. The brain calls us toward the biology of our spirits.

But the nagging thought that kept coming up for me was this: When we sense difference, when we sense that which is not us, how can we get in front of our biology, our programming, and access the openness of our spirits, the possibility of growth, awareness, morality and virtue that our spirits call us toward?

Dan Harris who spoke at the Nantucket Project and about whom I spoke on the sermon I did a bit ago on meditation, wrote the book, 10% Happier: How I tamed the voice in my head, reduced stress without losing my edge, and found self-help that actually works- a true story. I mentioned last time that his brother renamed the book title, From totally flawed to merely flawed.

Dan Harris was named co-anchor of ABC News' "Nightline" in October 2013. He is also co-anchor of the weekend edition of "Good Morning America," a position he has held since October 2010. As well, Harris files reports for "World News with Diane Sawyer," "Good Morning America," ABC News Digital and ABC News Radio. For four years, he anchored "World News Sunday."

One day on Good Morning America he froze and was finally able to admit to himself that his years covering Afghanistan and Iraq as a reporter had created PTSD, a situation he covered with opiates. Peter Jennings reassigned him to cover faith topics, which he recoiled from as a secular Jew. But this assignment slowly led to his healing.

He interviewed Eckhart Tolle and found that though Tolle knew the end results of meditation, to be calm in the face of all things, to be present, to have some control of reactions, he was not helpful in guiding one how to get there. When Harris asked Tolle how to break out of repetitive thoughts Tolle answered, “ You simply observe it’s another thought. And by knowing that it’s another thought, you’re not totally identified with it.” Hard jumping off point for most of us whose mind chatter is as relentless as it is demanding of our attention.

He interviewed Depak Chopra and again, though Chopra was clear about the end game, his advice about how to get there was obtuse. Chopra said, If you stay in the moment, you’ll have what is called spontaneous right action, which is intuitive, which is creative, which is visionary, which eavesdrops on the mind of the universe.”

Pretty enticing right? But when asked how to do this eavesdropping, Chopra too was not helpful or instructive.

After meeting Mark Epstein, Harris learned that the only way from here to peace, to a small capacity to get out in front of our chattering selves that knit together pieces of stories we have heard since we knew how to listen that demand a quick and decisive response from is, is meditation, is sitting still, is breathing consciously and training the mind to respond to our instructions, is being quietly with ourselves.

Now I don’t know about you, but I would rather follow a plan prescription that promised eating 2 avocados a day and walking the beach was the key to peace.

Harris learned that honing the capacity to not react is a super power.

This reminds me of the story about this fellow who was climbing a tree when suddenly he slipped. He grabbed a branch and was hanging there. Below him gapped a rocky gorge. After an hour or so passed, he was feeling exhausted. He looked up to the heavens and cried out: "God, help me, please, help me."
Suddenly the clouds parted and a deep voice resounded, "Let Go!"
The guy paused and looked up at heaven once more, and said: "Is there anyone else up there?"

I thought of Dan Harris when I read an article about French President Francois Hollande who vowed after attacks on Charlie Hebdo magazine, a Jewish supermarket and a policewoman that killed 17 people that France is committed to protecting all religions, saying that Muslims are the main victims of fanaticism.

Speaking at the Arab World Institute, he said Islam was compatible with democracy and thanked Arabs for their solidarity over terrorism in Paris.

Hollande said, "French Muslims have the same rights as all other French," he said. "We have the obligation to protect them. It is Muslims who are the first victims of fanaticism, fundamentalism and intolerance."

Francois Hollande grew the human spirit in this moment, he contributed to our spiritual and therefore biological evolution, he moved us closer to survival as a species. When we chose the courage to live outside of our programming, when we achieve balance by risking mutation, by risking the destruction of what we know for a wholeness of being that we have yet to fully understand, we increase our chances of survival as a species.

In his book, The Wisdom of the Body, Nuland talks about a human spirit that evolved through trial and error, that became a part of our biological structure bequeathed to each succeeding generation, that shaped it newly around new conditions, needs, moral understandings. Nuland calls this spirit the essence of human life, the material through which human life was invented. He writes,

In the gradual process of concocting the ingredients that are biology into the cassoulet that is man, the sauces of instinct have simmered into the motivations and yearnings that give flavor to human life. As our ever-exploring species has by trial and error responded over eons to that fluxing of the world around us and the world within us, we have slowly- imperceptibly- created the phenomenon that is today’s civilization.”

I think of that cafeteria that was our shelter during the storm. Our biology led our feet to separate corners, latino and white. And then our spirits, rising from us as we watched each other’s motions, kindness, need, rose up and led our feet to cross those lines and offer the little we had to offer, the snacks, cookies, hot chocolate. And in that moment, we evolved together, we reached beyond our biology with our biology, with the spirit made from our biology, and we changed.

May our days encourage the mutation of virtue and love in the face of difference and so lead us all toward a tomorrow that has room for all of our humanity.

Amen.

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