Author: Zed Rook

I read this piece this morning, and I’ve been pondering it ever since: “Your body is not your masterpiece — your life is. It is suggested to us a million times a day that our BODIES are PROJECTS. They aren’t. Our lives are. Our spirituality is. Our relationships are. Our work is. Stop spending all day obsessing, cursing, perfecting your body like it’s all you’ve got to offer the world.”
It’s such a counterintuitive headline to me, working with embodiment both in my own personal journey and supporting others. But still, my brain and my gut and my heart went YES YES YES while reading this piece. Not because I don’t believe that my body, too, is a masterpiece, and is an instrument that I want to fine-tune and hone and study and appreciate, but because ultimately, the message of the piece is to appreciate this amazing tool that I (we all) have, and stop obsessing over my body and it’s lack or abundance or style or whatever, and get on to the creating anyway.
I love the idea of my life, my spirituality, my relationships, and my work being projects that I am working on, my masterpieces. I’m not sure if I agree that my body can’t also be part of that masterpiece. I think some of the healing of this obsession over the masterpiece of the body can happen, and we can perhaps accept the innate masterpiece-ness of the body.
Well anyway, here’s the whole piece: Your Body Is Not Your Masterpiece, by Glennon Doyle Melton. I’d love to hear what you think about it.
— Zed

When we lead residential retreats and eat together, we often invite the group to give a blessing before each meal. It’s a practice I sometimes do at home, and always one of those little moments on retreat that I intend to pull back into my life, though it often slips.
(Even now, as I’m writing this, I realize I just ended up eating what will probably be my dinner, though it was intended to just be a snack when I started it, and that is often what happens! Note to self.)
I have had this poem on my bed-side table for years now, and recently I’ve been trying to memorize it, so it was on my mind during Portals of Pleasure. I shared it as a breakfast blessing one morning, and now here, I share it with you, too.
Why I Wake Early
by Mary Oliver
Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who make the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and crotchety–
best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light–
good morning, good morning, good morning.
Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.
Do you have a blessing practice around meals? What are the blessings that you use? Just curious … maybe if I found one that resonated, it’d be easier to practice.
xo,
Zed