HONORING THE BODY: Meditations on a Christian Practice

This latest installment in Jossey-Bass's Practices of Faith series is at once a highly organized survey of human embodiment and a free-flowing meditation on the same. Paulsell, who teaches at Harvard Divinity School, works her way through topics such as bathing, clothing, eating and having sex, and sheds thoughtful light on each not-so-mundane practice. As she discusses each activity, she ponders its spiritual significance and explores Scriptural references to it. She asks, for example, what it means to clothe ourselves in Christ, thereby eschewing but at the same time maintaining our sexual and ethnic identity. These metaphysical questions give way to lovely stories from the lives of Paulsell and her loved ones, and from the autobiographical work of such writers as Anne Lamott and Elizabeth Ehrlich, the latter an agnostic Jew who chronicles her difficult but rewarding journey toward keeping kosher. Paulsell's approach is to ask rather than to answer questions, and to analyze rather than to judge. The only absolute moral stand she takes is one in favor of church recognition of homosexual unions. In fact, Paulsell takes care throughout the book to include references to queer experience, the most touching of which is the story of Mark Doty's care for his dying lover, as told through Doty's poems. While there is little in the book that feels particularly dramatic or original, it will undoubtedly lead its readers to a new and deeper understanding of their embodiment. (Feb.)