Sacred Dust: Embodying the Divine
We are so thrilled to introduce you to our newest Bible study at Horacio Printing; Sacred Dust. (Available for purchase on 11/1) This devotional, written by Amy Brady, has been years in the making. We wanted to share some of her words to encourage you for this special, sacred journey!
Nothing makes you feel more fragmented than a season of suffering or difficulty. It often leaves you feeling torn asunder, foggy headed, and unmoored in life. Even our once devoted and grounded relationship with God can feel like it has lost its moorings, like we are adrift at sea.
Drifting for over a decade on this sea, created and revealed to me my own disconnect with my body, my heart, my soul, and my mind. They each felt like random pieces of different jigsaw puzzles, like unconnected pieces of myself rather than an integrated whole. I began to embark on healing in each of these areas separately but it was overwhelming and it didn’t bring the result I desired.
Becoming more attentive to my needs and myself, I began to notice little things. When my mind raced, so did my heart. If my brain was foggy, I would feel tired. At times when my soul ached, I couldn’t think clearly. Moments where my body was struggling, I tended to pull away from others.
Curious about this in a way I had never been before, I began to be deliberate about being aware. I prayed that God would help me notice what was going on within all of my being. What I discovered after some time was a revelation that my life was dis-integrated rather than integrated.
And isn’t integration far more fertile a ground for the seeds of God to grow?
To my fellow trauma survivors, please know this. Trauma dis-integrates the body. Our mere survival of such horrors and tragedies depends on the brain not allowing the body to fully engage with the effects of trauma. On a cellular level trauma will make its impact and you can spend a lifetime feeling dissociated from your own body, numb, hazy, and unsure. Integration as embodiment can become one of the greatest tools in your healing, whether that healing has yet to begin or you’ve been walking that road for years. Our bodies, I believe, are the last frontier of our Christian faith. The territory least explored but with the most opportunity.
The more I began to see integration as God’s design for my life, the more I began to integrate my body and my faith. Even my long-held notion of life categorized into secular and sacred began to change. No longer seeing my life through this two-fold lens, a deep desire grew within me to believe my entire self to be sacred. That felt quite bold of me! But that desire began when I landed on a passage of Scripture, familiar to me, yet new all at the same time as I read it through the eyes of a new translation.
“One day the Eternal God scooped dirt out of the ground, sculpted it into the shape we call human, breathed the breath that gives life into the nostrils of the human, and the human became a living soul.” Genesis 2:7 (The Voice)
If we are made in the Imago Dei, the image of God, then we bear His sacredness. Yes, sin marred that sacredness but it did not erase it. If that sacredness exists within us, then all of our life, every aspect and every detail– our body, our soul, our mind, our heart, our strength, all of it is sacred.
Just rest with that a moment.
You are sacred.
And yes, you are dust.
You are glory and humanity, all in one. Just like Jesus, but with a lot more growing to do.
God scooped dirt out of the ground, the very dirt He had just created on day three of creation, and like a master sculptor, He personally formed it into the shape of a human. With tenderness and care, and purpose He made us. Then He took His own breath, the same breath that breathed the stars into existence, He breathed into our nostrils, and in that instant we became not merely human, we became a living soul.
All that glory, bound in mere dust.
That’s who we are.
To live an embodied life is to live an integrated life. Our heart, soul, mind, and strength all work in tandem together. The areas where we once separated the sacred from the secular are now all sacred. If God is in all things, as St. Ignatius of Loyola believed, then this is a glorious extrapolation of the Gospel.
That means God is in our difficulties and our suffering. He’s in our happiness and our hardships. He’s in our laundry days and our sleepless nights. He’s in our caregiving and our being cared for. There is nothing His presence does not permeate. And dear one, that is indeed good news.
With all of ourselves integrated into one holy whole, Jesus now has access to the entirety of us. There’s not a song on the playlist of our lives that He cannot turn into a sacred dance. Living a faith embodied, we have positioned ourselves to be wide open to His lavish, tender grace, while remaining open to healing that permeates our entire being and sets us free in a divine domino effect of grace. Jesus steps into our sacred dance and takes the lead, rather than our exhausting efforts to lead Him. As He does this, He leads us beside the still waters, He restores our soul. He restores our very selves through wholeness and holiness.
Don’t you just long for this?
The deeper we walk into the Garden of Love with Him, the more we are ready to accept with wonder the absolute Mystery that is God. The unquantifiable, immeasurable, untamed wildness of the star-breathing God, the God who breathes life into dust and creates out of Love. In the words of St. Ignatius, we get to watch “Love loving” us and it will absolutely change your life.
Gone will be the desire to perform for love, to perfect your relationship with God, to never make mistakes, and to avoid suffering. In its place will arrive a desire to lean into His acceptance and allow Him to guide your steps. The opportunity will come for you to see your sin not as evidence against you but instead as a meeting place with God, where you can find mercy and grace. And perhaps most practically, you will begin to develop a much-needed trust that no matter what this world hurls at you, your Father has crafted you to be able to endure, grow, and even thrive in every season life brings, no matter how messy that may look in the moment.
I’m inviting you to step into a season of surrender. Allow Him to take you on a journey toward an embodied faith.
Spend time with Him, and with me as your momentary Spiritual Director, as we sift through Scriptures around embodying our breath, our emotions, our prayer, our worship, and our movement. And that is just the beginning of your adventure into embodied faith.
One day in each section of the devotional, will have a QR Code where you and I will spend a little more time taking a deeper dive into that week's content in a hands-on, practical way. Think of it as a little session of spiritual direction.
What is the beauty behind living an embodied existence? It opens up more pathways to live out and embody the greatest commandments of all.
“You shall love—“love the Eternal One your God with everything you have: all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind”—and “love your neighbor as yourself.” Luke 10:27 (The Voice)
As we begin to embody His lavish love and tenderness toward us, we are able to see with fresh eyes the Imago Dei painted upon those we encounter.
It is such a beautiful way to live. One that I hope is beckoning to you, calling you into the very depths of the Father’s heart for you.
“You direct me on the path that leads to a beautiful life.
As I walk with You, the pleasures are never-ending,
and I know true joy and contentment.” Psalm 16:11 (The Voice)
