THE HIERARCHY
Are we are living under the wrong authority?
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No matter how diligently and deliberately we meet the hard moment, there is still a part of us that falters, just a little. It’s as if the governance of ourselves becomes muddled, and the trepidation we believe we have quieted takes first place.
Still, after all these years, I observe that I am both curious and fascinated as she presses the wand deep into my chest. “I’ll be right back,” her soft voice surprisingly jarring in this silent atmosphere where only machine hums.
I’ll. Be. Right. Back. Four words that turn a somewhat routine procedure into something else entirely.
I delight at my visceral response. If you could see the inside of my body, it would not be cowering in fear…but smiling.
This knowing—of things unseen revealing themselves. Hard things. Maybe even unwanted things. But familiar in their cause.
Interrupting this interior conversation, she peeks around the door and asks if my doctor is local. I hear my laughter. A surprising response.
What is revealed in the darkness of pressed down metal on warmed gel and skin is a six-inch blood clot in the inferior vena cava.
I am calm. She is mortified.
And like a hundred times before, it becomes my ministry to calm her, instead of myself. What a profound pleasure to represent this Other love to those who sit in darkness.
The obsession has become the body.
Not only my own.
But a tide of humanity that trusts in all things of the flesh.
Here is the question that bubbles up from places within me that know things—
What happens when the body falters?
The one thing we incessantly worship has lied.
The body cannot offer the spiritual awakening we crave.
Will the red light enliven a frozen heart?
Is the cold plunge the answer to our hunger to gasp out loud?
My body has become voracious. The more attention I give it, the more it requires.
Not merely—
What will I eat?
What treatment will I choose?
What supplement should I take?
But—
What will I think about today?
What will I fear?
What will I anticipate?
What will determine whether this is a good day?
What gets my attention first when I wake up?
It becomes just so apparent driving from ultrasound to emergency room—
We are under the wrong authority:
Not the necessary attention we give to our bodies.
But the hierarchy we grant.
Have we become obsessed with what we can see—
What we can measure
What we can feel.
What hurts.
What weighs too much.
What isn't functioning.
What is aging.
What is growing.
What is disappearing.
What the scan says.
What the blood says.
What the mirror shares.
The visible is extraordinarily persuasive.
We believe we are controlling our bodies in our quest to strengthen them. But what if our bodies are controlling us?
What if we have become so consumed with the visible thing that we have buried the invisible one?
We say—
Body. Mind. Spirit.
Almost reflexively.
Perhaps the order has become a confession.
My body first.
The conviction is we have it exactly backwards.
Not simply in the order of the words.
In the order of authority.
Because the hierarchy isn't really about what comes first on a list.
It is about what gets the final word.
My body can tell me something hurts.
It should.
My mind can interpret the information.
It must.
Fear can arrive.
So can grief.
But none are intended to be the highest authority over who I am.
The body gets to report.
It does not get to rule.
There is something above it.
Something unseen.
For me, it is Spirit.
Not some ethereal version of myself.
Not intuition dressed up as Divinity.
God dwelling within.
The unseen authority beneath which everything else finds its proper place.
Spirit informs the soul.
The soul disciplines the mind.
The mind directs the body.
And the body—
precious, mysterious, breathtaking body—
participates.
Not domination.
Not suppression.
Order.
The body isn't the enemy.
It is the temple rather than the deity.
There is a difference.
What happens when the body falters?
If I have built me around strength—
and strength leaves?
If I have built me around beauty—
and beauty changes?
If I have built me around health—
and disease arrives?
If I have built me around longevity—
and mortality makes itself known?
If the body sits at the top of the hierarchy,
every diminishment of the body becomes a diminishment of self.
This is why the hierarchy matters.
Because the body will speak.
Sometimes scream.
In dark places.
When we least expect it.
Sometimes first to others who overreact and expect us to do the same.
Perhaps we have spent so much time attending to what can be seen that we have forgotten to ask what is happening in the place that we cannot.
Who am I becoming within?
What governs my thoughts?
What has authority over my fear?
What tells me whether I am well?
What tells me whether I am whole?
The body is real.
The body matters.
The body is sacred.
But the body is not the whole story of us.
What would happen if we obsessed on Spirit instead?
Every ache becomes not shout but whisper.
Every scan becomes instruction.
Every number becomes a measure of healing hope.
I no longer want to ask my body to tell me who I am.
I tell it.
My allegiance is to something Holy.
Something unseen.
Something that cannot be scanned.
Something a blood test cannot measure.
Maybe the deepest work of healing isn't learning to control the body better. Maybe it is restoring the hierarchy.
Allowing the body to speak without allowing it to command.
Allowing the mind to think without believing every thought it produces.
Allowing fear to arrive, and pass, without granting it authority.
And returning, again and again, to the unseen place from which I choose to live.
Perhaps the question isn't—
How well are you caring for your body?
Perhaps it is—
Who have you placed in charge?
Because when the body falters we discover whether we have been living from it
or merely living in it.
NOTES
Soul Map
Cold plunges.
Red light.
Peptides.
Saunas.
Protein.
Longevity.
Hormones.
Sleep scores.
Glucose monitors.
Breath work.
Supplements.
Biological dentistry.
Microbiomes.
Nervous-system regulation.
Anti-aging.
Anti-inflammatory everything.
We feed the body.
Measure it.
Scan it.
Supplement it.
Exercise it.
Optimize it.
Detox it.
Biohack it.
Photograph it.
We call much of this wellness.
And some of it genuinely is.
But somewhere along the way,
care can become obedience.
When your body asks for your attention, can you give it what it needs without giving it your allegiance?
Maybe this is the Soul Map—
not an accounting of everything we do for our bodies,
but an honest look at what we have asked our bodies to do for us.
Tell us we are safe.
Tell us we are beautiful.
Tell us we are healthy.
Tell us we are young.
Tell us we have time.
Tell us everything is going to be okay.
What an impossible burden to place upon flesh.
REFLECTION
What has been occupying your attention lately—
your body,
or the life being lived within it?
What does your body get to decide about your day?
Your peace?
Your hope?
Your identity?
When something in the body changes, what within you changes with it?
And what doesn't?
Where have you mistaken listening to your body for obeying it?
What would it look like to care for your body deeply while placing your allegiance somewhere higher?
And perhaps the question foundational to all the others—
Who gets the final word?
YOU ARE HERE.
Image: I wasn’t told to limit my activity. I am not certain I would have listened anyway. This is where I turn everything right side up. I take my body for a walk. It doesn’t take me.
I can spend my entire life trying to save my body and accidentally abandon myself—Janene Kraft