The Rumi Forum’s Center for Interfaith and Intercultural Dialogue hosted ‘Your Body and Your Spiritual Life: Friends or Foes?’ with Rev. Thomas Ryan, CSP.
“What’s your understanding of your embodied being: something precious knit together by God, or the prison house of the soul? Do we simply inhabit a body, or is a body who we truly are? Is your body a gift, or a task? Or both? We will consider the place of the body in a truly holistic spirituality by reflecting on the contribution to our spiritual lives made by exercise and rest, feasting and fasting, washing and dressing, touching and love-making. We will look at some scriptural points of reference in the Abrahamic traditions, and reflect on why the “corporal works of mercy” are given an honored place in all of them.” Rev. Thomas Ryan, CSP
Rev. Thomas Ryan, CSP, is a member of the Paulists, a community of priests in the Catholic Church committed to work for Christian unity and interreligious understanding. He directs the Washington-based Paulist North American Office for Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations. He has a personal passion for topics related to holistic spirituality, as reflected in the titles of several of his dozen books: Wellness, Spirituality, and Sports; Fasting Rediscovered: a Guide to Health and Wholeness for Your Body-Spirit; Reclaiming the Body in Christian Spirituality; Prayer of Heart and Body.