A prayer for the flesh

Dear Spirit,

In moments when I allow myself closeness to you, your tenderness feels like a comforting hand on my back, like fingers running through my hair, like chills that caress my limbs. To me, your presence is sensate.

What is this marvelous thing we call skin? So delicate, it requires a dedication of maintenance and care; often, it’s dry and blemished; it tears easily and, once open, its undersides lay bare. It can also be electric with the sensations of touch: a nearly imperceptible graze, a furious scratching. Sometimes, I feel elated by the tactility of certain fabrics against me—the soft reassurance of being swaddled, cocooned. There is no pleasure like the comfort of being held—a pleasure which is only heightened in being attuned to the range of nuance available to us at this, our most surface level.

Oh, what bodies we’ve been endowed with! So much knowledge and information available to us—a wealth of potential experience. A double-edged gift: we are rendered available to immense pleasure and incredible pain, our capacities for which are only heightened by the cultivation of our awareness and sensitivity. It scares me, the abuses that we get used to and the constant threat of toxicity to this, our most exposed and bountiful organ. I love and fear this gift given to each of us: its potential, the multivalence of inevitable overwhelm. I love and fear the care it demands, all that it is available to, and all that it has the capacity for.

Spirit, give me the strength and courage to tend to it with loving care. Grant me the tenacity to ever grow with it in right relation and to help me never fear the responsibility I have to it: responsibility to this flesh of mine and responsibility to the flesh of others.

Amen.