Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy.
KJV
Healthy are those who extend grace, they shall find their own prayers answered.
Aramaic translation from “Blessings of the Cosmos” by Neil Douglas Kltoz
I once heard an obese woman refer to another woman who was morbidly obese as “shameful.” “Why would anyone let themselves get like that.” She followed her comments with a reference to her own weight. “I know, I’m big but I’m not THAT big.”
Later I crafted a theory. When so much of one’s time and mind has been given to thinking about food, diets, calories, weight, size, etc, there is bound to be negative self-talk generated from the constant attention to thin-ness. Often the negativity toward one’s self is so well-practiced it is difficult to face directly. “I know I’m big BUT….” Signifies that it is hard to admit to the difficulty of adopting healthy behaviors but easy to blame others for being unable to ascribe to healthy habits themselves. In short, it is easier to focus on outward appearances than on inward thoughts.
The next verse comes after our week of fasting where we, in humility, acknowledged our utter powerlessness in being able to solve the issue of our weight outside of our relationship with Jesus the Christ. In making our weight a spiritual issue, we acknowledge that the reasons behind the eating are of primary concern. The real problem lies in not how we are behaving but what we deeply and most inwardly believe. We have invited Spirit to the source of the issue, the thoughts we think about our bodies.
We now know from the fast that it is possible to change our eating behavior. We now bring our faith to bear on the issue of our thoughts. We seek grace to make change to the way we think.
The first step in acquiring grace for ourselves is to extend it to others. The Aramaic word for “grace” can also be translated as ”mercy” and “compassion” and it comes form an ancient root word that means “womb” or “deepest part of ourselves.” However, the “deep” parts of ourselves are often hidden even from us. One way to delve deeper is to listen to the thoughts we habitually think about ourselves and others. Often we will find a stream of negativity.
One way to unmask negative self-talk is by learning to be aware of EVERY negative comment you think or say about your own or another person’s weight or size. What if instead of a negative comment my friend had silently intoned a prayer for the much larger woman, “I pray that she be healthy and well.” In so doing, she would have been uttering a prayer for herself to be healthy and well, according to this Beatitude.
What about the flipside. What happens when you notice yourself noticing thin people. ..a possible thought to bring to awareness at that moment is gratitude for the reminder that you are reaching your ideal or goal weight. All situations, conversations and experiences around food, diets, calories, weight, size, etc can begin to serve as cues to extend grace either to yourself or another. In this way, slowly by slowly, subconscious thoughts are trained to associate weight with health. We turn from habits of giving criticism to granting compassion. This Beatitude assures us that when we give mercy then will be blessed with mercy.
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Record three different translations of Beatitude #5 from the Bible translation website OR choose one possible interpretation from the book Blessings of the Cosmos, by Neil Douglass-Klotz. Chose one verse to focus on for this week.
Return to the page in the notebook where you wrote down negative comments about your weight. Write over the page and cover every bit of the old writing. Cover the page with prayers of blessings to yourself concerning your weight. Don’t worry if you are unable to read it, you are attempting to reach deeper levels of your mind as you write new text over old text, new script over old script, new words over old words, blessings over curses.
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