I am the avatar of the Dad Bod. I see it as another example of the unfairness of life. My flabbiness matches the recession of the hairline. When I don a Santa suit, I don;t need to put on the padding for the belly. I was on my bike and stopped to get a lemonade from a child’s stand at a yard sale. “You are fat;” she graciously remarked as I paid her a quarter. I scrupulously avoid looking in mirrors, so as not to recognize the sagging mass of flesh.
I have a multitude of excuses. I often eat a health product, a doughnut, for breakfast. Plantar fasciitis (foot pain near the heel) keeps me from walking as much as I would like. (The only thing that really helps is a steroid injection). I realize that I weigh too much. I would have to exercise constantly to try to burn off the amount of calories that I ingest. I avoid buffets as it is a collision of my desire to “get my money’s worth” and a slide into being a glutton.
I wonder if my Dad Bod is related to a spiritual laxity as well.My list of excuses for spiriutal laxity cna easily grow as long as my list for physical decline. I just read that people undergo a training regiment before facing the many, many miles of pilgrimage, many paths over 500, to walk the Camino de Santiago (road of James) in Spain. (Emilio Estevez did a movie on it, with his father Martin Sheen,The Way.) I assume it requires a time of both physical and spiritual preparation, but some travellers seem to prepare physically alone and seem to expect the spiritual aspect of pilgrimage to wash over them during the journey itself.
As a representative of a Calvinistic faith, I emphasize the gift of grace and approach it with gratitude. Given that gift, how much of the Christian life is pure receptivity and how much effort to we place on efforts toward piety, what we would tend to call spirituality in our time? I applaud the spiritual practices movement.Lately, a bumper sticker keeps appearing on Facebook about being the church, as opposed to going to church.Worship has been part of “keeping the Sabbath holy.” (I do get a kick out of the loudest supporters of prayer a in schools and the public posting of the 10 Commandments seeming to miss this point.) I am mystified by the continued attempt to separate worship form the Christian life. Many of us are so spiritually slothful, that this small concession to spiritual discipline is not met. Yet, when people do come to church, they often find less graced refreshment that a constant push for more, more, more: money, or time, or efforts.
As I aged, I was under the impression that wisdom would emerge, even as my memory for knowledge decreases. It has not been the case. Spiritual practices lie scattered on the roadway, as some have helped for a bit, but many do not seem to fit the moment or my personality. I grasp intellectually the import of a physical fast, but the experience leaves me as empty as my stomach.
As I help with planning a trip to the rocky Mountain national Park, I have been good about walking more hills. I also anticipate uncommon moments in the commonplace of walking in the mountains: the sight of a smooth pool, a sudden flash of color on the rocks, the sweet scent of some unidentified herb wafting in the crisp air. One piece of spiritual wisdom I have acquired. God touches us with traces of grace in the everyday far more often than a moment of epiphany.
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