Full Description
Foreword Reviews' 18th Annual INDIEFAB Book of the Year for Body, Mind and Spirit
2015 Readers' Choice Awards Honorable Mention
Our bodies teach us about God, and God communicates to us through our bodies. Our bodies are more good than we can possibly imagine them to be. And yet at times we may struggle with feelings of shame and guilt or even pride in regard to our bodies. What is God trying to do through our skin and bones?
In Embracing the Body spiritual director Tara Owens invites you to listen to your thoughts about your body in a way that draws you closer to God, calling you to explore how your spirituality is intimately tied to your physicality. Using exercises for reflection at the end of each chapter, she guides you to see your body not as an inconvenience but as a place where you can meet the Holy in a new way—a place to embrace God's glorious intention.
Contents
Introduction: An Invitation to More
Part I: Body Reality
1. Where Do Our Fears Come From?
2. How We Lost Our Bodies
3. Broken Body, Broken Church
4. Dust to Dust: Incarnation, Body and Flesh
Part II: Facing the Fears
5. Angel or Animal: Beyond False Dichotomies
6. Beauty or Beast: Living with an Unglorified Body
7. Touch or Temptation: Issues Around Sexuality
8. Desire or Destruction: Exploring Our Impulses
Part III: Becoming Whole
9. Tension Taming: Embracing Our Fears, Finding Redemption
10. At Home in Your Skin: Exploring God's Messages in Your Body
11. Sensing His Kingdom: Encountering God's Physical Creation
12. Flesh of My Flesh: Union, Sexuality and God's Design
13. This Is My Body: Connection and Communion with the Body of Christ
Appendix: Group Discussion Guide
Author's Note
Acknowledgments
