Filling the Void:
Eating Disorders and Spirituality

Opening Words (#462)

I shall take my voice wherever there are those who want to hear the melody of freedom or the words that might inspire hope and courage in the face of despair and fear. My weapons are peaceful, for it is only by peace that peace can be attained. The song of freedom must prevail.
-- Paul Robeson

Readings

Catechism, Betsy Sholl, Cries, p. 217
The woman in the ordinary, Marge Piercy, Cries, p. 21

Sermon

Filling the Void:
Eating Disorders and Spirituality

There's been a lot of discussion of eating disorders in the past fifteen years. They are no longer a secret and they are no longer something that we feel we can relegate to a back seat. Increasing numbers of people in America have a form of eating disorder. In fact one study proposes that one out of every ten young women in America has an eating disorder and it is beginning to be more apparent among males as well. Such ratios are much higher in areas like Silver Spring because most young people who have eating disorders come from white-collar, middle- and upper- class backgrounds. In her book on eating disorders, Dr. Hilde Bruch writes:

"No reports on anorexia nervosa have come from underdeveloped countries where there is still danger of widespread starvation or famine. It is worth mentioning that in the United States anorexia nervosa has not been reported in blacks or members of other underprivileged groups. A disproportionately large percentage of patients with anorexia nervosa come from upper-class backgrounds, a few from the ranks of the super-rich. In other words, self-starvation is observed only under conditions of adequate of abundant food supply."

Some eating disorders can be as simple as chronic overweight that you can't seem to conquer to serious, life-threatening obesity. They can also be as extreme and frightening as self-starvation, which is anorexia, or as secret and humiliating as purging, which is called bulimia. These disorders are a hidden pain and shame to those who struggle with them and a frightening and confounding behavior to those who only encounter it second or third hand; they seem a bizarre kind of illness because in a way they are consciously perpetuated by the sufferers. A person knows that they're dangerously obese but they can't stop eating. They know they're weak and fainting, but they can't stop starving themselves or purging their food. They look in the mirror, and whatever their actual body size and shape, what they see, what they actually see in the mirror is a fat person. And in today's picture perfect American society, fat is downright grotesque and even unnatural.

Both the impetus and the difficulty for my exploring this topic is precisely because eating disorders have been so much a part of my own life. My mother struggled with weight issues most of her life. My sister was anorexic during her time at college. I struggled with active bulimia from the age of thirteen. Actually many people who work in this field agree that eating disorders can reappear any time, much like alcoholism, so that bulimia will never become something I need not concern myself with.

There's been a lot of research into what causes people to react to life and food this way; there are a lot of theories, but no one really knows yet. It could be mothers, fathers, siblings, peer pressure, advertising, puberty, societal structures and pressures....Some researchers think it's caused by combinations of those factors. There's some evidence of a psycho-biological connection. There is a strong correlation between a childhood of being physically, sexually or emotionally abused, and people developing one of these disorders, but abuse is not always part of an eating-disordered person's history. It isn't part of mine. In her work "The Obsession" Kim Chernin ties eating disordered perspectives to power:

"They could not see they were too thin because slenderness had become a statement of power. There could never be too much of it, since more implied that the will had grown even stronger in its relentless struggle to dominate matter."

There are no proven cures for eating disorders. There are diet programs, retreat centers and counseling available. Some of them seem to work some of the time. But perhaps there's something to be said for the little things giving us a better grasp of the big picture. In many ways eating disorders are a mystery and despite their being a mystery rooted in the psyche, I think they have a spiritual aspect that is usually overlooked. The Unitarian Universalist minister Marilyn Sewell wrote in an introduction to the book she edited, Cries of the Spirit, that :

"The cultural resistance to embracing the sensual and the erotic as part of our spiritual nature is exceedingly strong. We in this country spend an inordinate amount of time attempting to control our bodies. Objectified, surveyed, judged, our flesh is seen as an instrument, a means to various and sundry ends. The hair shirts of yore have become the exercise bikes of today."

This breakdown, this separation of body and soul, is evident in people actively struggling with eating disorders. For them, the body is the self, and they perceive it as repugnant, yet feel obsessed with this self. I will never forget what life has been like for me when I have been actively bulimic. Whenever I ate, or didn't, I was thinking of my body and how horrible it was. Whenever I looked in the mirror, went to a restaurant, passed a reflecting store window, got dressed, got undressed, I thought of it. I remember how overwhelming it was to try to combat this on my own. And what did it mean to combat it? How could I fight the insidious and humiliating feelings and behaviors that go along with an eating disorder? Once, trying to exorcise my demons, I wrote a short story about my bulimia and put my name on it when it was published in the high school literary magazine. I hoped that once I had made it public, it would cease to be my private hell, and in no longer being private, would go away altogether. Needless to say, this didn't happen. The only lie I was than aware of in the story was that the girl's hair was blonde. Now I see that the only truth in the story was that this girl, myself, had no sense of the inherent worth and dignity as innate in her, as it is in all people. The only self I believed in was for almost ten years the one in my story: "...fat, more and more fat, like a lump of fat."

Throughout those years I looked about as I do now, or thinner. My misperception was one of a few common symptoms of eating disorders. In Hilde Bruch's book, a girl with anorexia nervosa couldn't see a difference between photos of herself at 15 years and a healthy weight, and at 17 years, with her weight down to 70 pounds. She said "I feel inwardly that I am larger than that - no matter what I tell myself. Even... when I was at my lowest, 67 lbs., I felt I was very large." A lot of people who suffer in this way are aware of their skewed perspective and it contributes to their feeling helpless, pathetic and fundamentally off-balance around food, weight, body-appearance and self. Ironically they are often people who are viewed by others as successful and high-powered. Yet they all testify to another symptom, the sensation articulated by another woman in Bruch's book: "It's not that I fear food as much as I fear the irrational feeling that somehow the food almost has the power over me that a person would - it is almost as if it (the food) could make me eat it".

Another common denominator among people with active eating disorders is a sense of emptiness. Many say that at some point they stopped being able to tell if they were hungry, and hunger had little connection with when or why they did or didn't eat. They ate to fill a different kind of emptiness. Another individual in Bruch's book expressed this feeling hollow in this way "she was afraid that the hostility of others and their angry words would rattle around inside her and keep on wounding her. By stuffing herself with food she would cover her sore inside, like with a poultice, and she would not feel the hurt so much." Many people in twelve-step Overeaters Anonymous meetings speak of eating to stuff down the pain of living, or eating to fill a void they feel inside themselves, or to buffer themselves against the world.

At times, it seems that an essential element is missing from this equation of people and life, and that is a spiritual conception of the ultimately natural, physical quality of life. This seems related to that common myth in America, that if you want something enough and do your absolute utmost, you can have it, you can make it happen. Stories we hear of the super rich, the beautiful people who fill our television and movie screens, self-help literature all support the sense that perfection is actually attainable after all, and if you don't realize your standards of perfection, it's your own fault. This attitude doesn't seem to exist in other parts of the world. Among wealthy members of wealthy nations, it seems easy for many of us to get out of touch sometimes with life's realities due to our extraordinary quality of life.

This is where spirituality can mean the most. Spirituality is rooted in its connection to both the sublime and the grievous in life. Spiritual and theological thought, experiences and disciplines frame our lives, and we can rely on them and turn to them for interpretation and comfort about what might otherwise be more than we could ever deal with on our own. They inform birth, life passages, growing, sexuality, and aging.
Such reflective resources are especially valuable to us in because ours is a society that glorifies the riches, fame, beauty, and lifestyle. Sublime nowadays refers far more often to a car, a dinner, a dress, a party, than to something that actually transcends the physical.

So too are our experiences of the grievous changed. There are no reports of anorexia or bulimia in countries where there is still danger of widespread starvation or famine. The connection between food and life for people in those countries is very different than it is for us here. There they eat to live. Here many of us, protected from much of the world's suffering, can lose our sense of what is most meaningful and good in life, to the point where we join the ranks of those who live to eat, or live to starve.

We lose sight of obvious truths in the course of living our daily lives, that of course there is much more to life than food or your body, and people are not after all the highest power in the universe. There are worse things than fat, there are better things than food. A hunger of the soul will never be sated by food, the suffering of the soul will never be canceled out by physical starvation. Most food obsessions as well as drug addictions, alcoholism and even workaholism are a negation of self, life and spirit on a very basic level. Religion, in its best form, works against those tendencies, reminding us of the importance of living ethically and meaningfully, aware of our spiritual hungers, knowing when our soul is suffering, and why, offered caring and support in answering our pain and yearnings, supporting our sense of the sublime and the grievous, the larger reality and significance, of our lives.

Spirituality reminds us that in people the spirit and the flesh are met and are one. It has both a universal and an intimate capacity that can reinforce our sense of unity, our understanding of ourselves as whole and varied beings who belong here, amongst each other, and who all have dignity and gifts and spirits that are as inestimable as they are invisible. Spirituality and religion are rich enough to offer a multitude of things to a multitude of people, but among their diverse capacities is certainly their ability to revivify our connection to what it means to be human and alive. Imperfection is human, that our body fat ratio is not what composes our spirit and life. The importance or fascination or beauty or fortune of our lives is not determined by our weight, but by our souls.

I hope that does not sound pat; because I mean it whole-heartedly; and I know the way such an addiction can permeate one's whole life until it begins to underlie every action, every plan for every day, the way we sit, the way we stand, in the end, all the little and large ways we live our daily lives. Many young people turn away from a spiritual focus in their lives in their teens and twenties. Some of them find the spiritual solace they need in the spiritual focus of Twelve Step programs like AA, OA, and NA. Sometimes a secular experience can accomplish the same thing, even unexpectedly, exposing us to new experiences and views and a larger context for life and what is important in the world and ourselves.

Many things can trigger a response in us and galvanize us towards expanding our understanding of what it means to be a man or a woman, young or old, toned or not, and bring us closer to a peaceful and healthy relationship with, and acceptance of, what our bodies and lives have to offer. But as a church we need to be aware of the powerful potential we hold as a spiritual community to help not only with the timeless vagaries and injustices of life but also to aid in modern kinds of trouble and suffering, such as eating disorders. As a church we nourish and cherish and encourage each other, in all the sizes and shapes and colors and ages and heritages we hold. And as individuals, we need to be open to sharing our struggles and pain with each other, believing in the power of this faith community. Here more than anywhere, we affirm and declare and strengthen and spread what we know: we are each sacred and spirit-infused even as we are human and fallible. We are each beautiful. We are each precious. We are each powerful. We are each responsible. We are each lovable.

My own experience has not at all been that now I've "got" religion and I'm all serene come what may. I don't expect nirvana will be attainable for me, at least not in this lifetime. Life can be grievous, and in my life I've learned that for me food can be truly grievous, and I have to deal differently with it than I would like. But for me, the struggle and my continuing awareness of it has taught me a lot, starting with something so innocuous as food has helped me to learn to weigh and measure my life.

Acceptance of many of the larger realities of life is something we struggle with throughout life, but the key thing may be for our society and selves to remember the appropriateness and inescapability of imperfection, to remember that we have spiritual selves which are easily starved in this day and age. We need to learn to feed our spirits not with food or alcohol or drugs or work or even prizes and awards but with soul food: nature, poetry, humor, music, love, dance, questions, answers, respect. These are tools not only for survival but for contentment. They are part of living, part of the imperfection, part of the pain and the joy and the in-betweeness of life that take turns in our spirits and bodies and lives. We are growing beyond the dichotomies of the past.

All bodies are flawed, some bodies are ill, some spirits are oppressed or grieving, all spirits feel joy and sorrow. The spirit and the flesh are one, inextricably linked, astoundingly reflective of each other. If the spirit suffers, so does the body. If the body rejoices, so does the spirit. They share fatigue, exhilaration, depression, surprise. It has long been evident, long overlooked or rejected, must now be proclaimed, and so now I say in this house of worship: the flesh is not unholy, the flesh is not even just a vessel for the holy; the flesh is holy. Let us rejoice in our bodies. Look at your hands, the skin, the veins, the hair, the nails - you would know them anywhere, and also the hands and bodies of those you love well. Think of the happiness you feel when you see those you love, their body across a room or a street, and how we are drawn to each other, how satisfying it is to touch or hold each other in love or passion. The poet Ellen Bass wrote:

"I want to praise bodies
nerves and synapses
the impulse that travels the spine
like fish darting

I want to praise the mouth
that warm wet lair where the tongue reclines
and the tongue, roused
slithering a cool path

I want to praise hands
those architects that create us anew
fingers, cartographers, revealing
who we can become
and palms, cupped priestesses
worshipping the long slow curve

I want to praise muscle
and the heart, that flamboyant champion
with its insistent pelting like
tropical rain

Hair, the sweep of it
a breeze

and feet, arch taut
stretching like cats

I want to praise the face, engraved
like a river bed, it breaks like morning
like a piñata, festival of hope"

Our church is a place for many kinds of learning, sharing, striving and healing. Respect and love for our physical selves should not be overlooked in our ongoing journey of searching as we live. Let us not forget, let us not doubt - and I say this knowing how difficult it is not to forget, not to doubt: our bodies are blessings, they are good, they deserve our love and respect, just as each of us deserves love and respect, in this home of love and respect, let us learn to rejoice, let us help each other to rejoice, let us not forget to rejoice in these embodied lives.

Amen.

Benediction (#682)

Beauty is before me, and
Beauty is behind me,
above me and below me
hovers the beautiful.
I am surrounded by it,
I am immersed in it.
In my youth, I am aware of it,
and in old age,
I shall walk quietly the beautiful trail.
In Beauty it is begun.
In beauty, it is ended.
-- From the Navajo Indians of North America