These thoughts are inspired by the first week of Caroline Williams’ 30 Days of Christian Yoga. It’s currently ongoing, and I got started late so I’m only a week in, but I recommend it so far.
I have been noticing lately just how much my brain functions in words. It doesn’t form pictures well. What pictures I do manage to conjure up are mostly my brain describing the picture to me. You know, with words.
This means that when I appreciate written imagery, I’m mostly appreciating the pretty wording. It doesn’t always mean much to me beyond that.
Having concrete experiences to connect imagery to can help though. Caroline’s comments in this yoga series got me thinking about how yoga specifically can help me grasp imagery from the Bible.
The verses she focused on that first week were Ephesians 3:17b-19: And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Those descriptive words – rooted, wide, long, high, deep – have always been vague word pictures, maybe bringing to mind trees and buildings, but what if I connect them to what I experience in my body?
Standing firm in mountain pose with my feet planted and rooted and stable, keeping me upright and steady… God’s love is a firmer base than that.
Inhaling, I stretch my arms out to my sides and pause there before lifting them above my head… God’s love is wider than that.
From warrior III, my body in a T shape with one foot on the floor, I reach the other foot as far back as I can to plant it on the ground and land in a lunge… longer than that.
Back in that mountain pose, I reach my arms high above my head and lift up onto my toes, looking up to my fingers… higher than that.
Taking a slow inhale, I feel it move through my ribs and my stomach the whole way down into my pelvis… deeper than that.
This isn’t a vague picture I can’t bring to life in my head. This is experience, moments I’ve lived over and over, moments I can relive if I want reminding of how they feel.
God gave us bodies. God became a body. Our bodies are how we experience life. Why would we leave them out of our experience of knowing God?
What does the width and length and height and depth of God’s love feel like in your body?
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