From Dissociation to Desire

My journey from ecclesial idealism to embodiment, guided by an old crone

I am learning to exist by tending to my body rather than dissociating. I am learning his refusal to dissociate, this turning instead toward myself, threatens the social arrangements I inhabit. I am learning how much society  has required my dissociation, and I am wondering if the social rupture I long for— a thing I used to call church—is the prioritization  of the wellbeing of our bodies over the enticements and necessities of our social arrangements. 

We socialize through desirability within hierarchies that predate us. Privileged bodies make themselves worthy of being seen. Marginalized bodies make themselves worthy of being used. By exertion of privilege or contortions into usefulness, we become desirable. And, since social mechanisms are propelled by desire, we become social.  

---

I was a wreck the day an old crone inserted herself into my journaling practice, in a self-loathing so thick I could barely serve breakfast. And my child needed so much more than breakfast. She needed me, but I was at the bottom of myself. My panicked mind groped for a way to move toward her that was not violent or harmful.  

I don’t feel good.  

The sensation of my body beckoned me, both foreign and familiar. There was no moral exertion, no aspirations toward good motherhood; just the recognition of my body. I am not bad for suffering. My child is not bad for needing me. But I don’t feel good. This recognition of my body carried with it a solution—not one for pulpits or books or programs, but for me. 

 “I don’t feel good. I’m going to lie down,” I said with the gentle urgency of a mother who is about to throw up or pass out. The wisdom of bodies and how to care for them just rolled off my tongue. The words needed no explanation; they were equally accessible to my four-year-old child and my panicked mind. Bodies that don’t feel good lie down. 

I hurried to the couch and lay down, my child trailing me with an armload of cars. I felt instant relief; partial, but sufficient to play. Later I returned to the couch with my journal. I had scrawled a few lines early that morning, a futile attempt to gather myself. The silliest line stood out, not for its insight but for the welcome it extended. I felt embarrassed by its simplicity, its flight of fantasy, and the strange comfort it offered. But lying on the couch with the crisis of motherhood still looming, the line was there, carried on the voice of an elderly woman. 

“You needn’t be unhappy. Let me pour you some tea.”

---

There are so many reasons our bodies remain an enigma and a threat. Baked into our social arrangements is disgust for the human body. Disgust for sexualities that don’t serve the pleasure of the straight white man. Disgust for children whose emotional needs exceed the capacity of one caregiver. Disgust for mothers who deteriorate in the isolation of the nuclear family. Disgust for old bodies, fat bodies, disabled bodies, black female bodies that don’t retreat into the background, the useful furnishings of our institutions. Where, in our social arrangements, are our bodies met with love?  

Even the love of a mother for their child flows against the current of these arrangements. Parental love, I am taught, must be braided with disgust for what our children’s bodies might become to be correctly administered. Where love doesher most arduous, creative work, traversing the inscrutable needs of multiple bodies, we are wading through puddles of shame. 

I wonder sometimes if the Pentecostal fire fell to reacquaint us with our humanness; if the power of the Spirit is to expose our gaping need to be loved. Is it possible for our bodies to be nothing other than what they are and to be met with love? Is it possible for stray desires, having no utility, to wander playfully through bodies, welcomed with tenderness and delight? I am clamoring for sacred language, because how can I hope that we will break loose from the social arrangements careening us headlong into violence? 

---

“So. You long for a different world. One that could never be.” 

Tears. Silence. Hands curled around a steaming mug.

“The world you live in is intolerable.” the crone appeared lost in thought, staring at her own tea leaves. 

“Open your umbrella,” she said, standing abruptly. “Let's go outside.” 

We stepped out into the evening rain. She walked rapidly ahead of me. I had to jog to keep up. Rain drenched her overcoat and dripped down her face. I clung to my umbrella. We stopped at the edge of the lake. 

“Sit here and wait,” the crone said. “Eventually the water will still and invite you in. When it does, it will be a world large enough to contain your desires.” 

She left me and I sat, legs outstretched. I watched the rain splatter on lake’s squally surface, mesmerized by water swirling, swelling, sloshing over rocks and onto muddy banks. Mesmerized by movement—flowing, receiving, billowing—until a sudden moment of clarity overtook me, and the water was perfectly still. I unlaced my boots, removed my socks, and dipped my foot in. Next my deepest self, and I felt the agony leave my body. I dipped and turned, spun and dove, expanded upward and burst into the sunlight. 

I set down my pen and could not believe the total relief I felt. I have returned to this meditation often. Sometimes the rains are so torrential I can barely see her image ahead of me, but she always leads me to the lake, where I am mesmerized by the storm until I am invited in. And the relief? I am allowed to desire. Without disgust or shame. Without men explaining the impossibility and naivete of my desire. Without ingratitude. To be a person is to desire, and to allow desire to exist playfully in our bodies is to unleash a creativity that breaches the boundaries of what is possible. 

---

Prayer became scarce when I unearthed my agency to do the work of self-repair. When I pray—because I still encounter the terror of curtailed agency—it is no longer to a male figure hovering overhead,but to a Black female figure who approaches me from behind.¹ In this shift I felt most accompanied by the midwifery of atheists, who had breathed through their own existential terror and found the tender core at the heart of human fear.²

It was a shift with all the destabilizing, awakening power of deconversion; yet every time I looked back at Jesus I could see him, and all the social longings that had bound me to him, more clearly. God becoming, finally becoming, human.  

What if our way out of social despair into new social arrangements—arrangements that mend rather than harm—is not through moral exertion but through the recognition of our bodies? What if we don’t need a grand idea—just the wisdom of bodies and how to care for them, a wisdom accessible to everyone? What if new social arrangements are fueled not by the application of social power, but by desire at play in our bodies? What happens when we welcome our needs and our desires? When we don’t subject ourselves to compulsory dissociation required by social hierarchies? When human need and human desire become the fabric of our communities? 

1. I was not familiar with the Black Sacred Feminine when her presence guided me through my eating disorder. I’m sure this will be material for a future post. Meanwhile, God is a Black Woman by Christena Cleveland was a very helpful starting place for anchoring my conception of this metaphor for god.

2. Also material for another post; one I hope to write soon!