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Pick Up Your Feet: Understanding Our Bodies as Gift

Pick Up Your Feet: Understanding Our Bodies as Gift

Last updated on: March 3, 2025 at 3:31 pm by Ellen Petersen

Pick Up Your Feet: Understanding Our Bodies as Gift 2025-03-03T15:31:48-04:00 Ellen Petersen

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This past Saturday I was lucky enough to have Nick Davidson speak at an event my college does called Underground—a certain night set aside once a month for an hour talk, an hour of Adoration, and an hour Mass. I usually skip the speaker, but this time the posters around campus all read “Theology of the Body” in big letters and really, who doesn’t love a little Theology of the Body?

For those of you who may not have heard of Nick Davidson, he is a radically changed Catholic convert, a funny and eclectic man, and a casual friend of Fr. Mike Schmitz. Sounds like you’re in for something revolutionary, right? Not exactly. His talk was a little different.

Nick did not give the usual talk about purity or emotional chastity, but neither did he provide some sort of new information to enlighten us. No, he simply took what we all knew deep down and give us a new perspective on it. It was unlike any other Theology of the Body talk I have heard yet; one of those talks that left you thinking, “How did I not see this sooner?”

Nick began this “obvious” and beautiful talk by having each of us pinch our hands together to form what looked like a crab claw and then asked that we all pinch ourselves on the shoulder repeatedly. “Do you see that?” He asked us, referring to our bodies. “That is all that we have in this life to experience everything- to experience love and hurt. It is all you have to express how you feel, how you wish to experience and respond to the world. This is what we’ve got.”

Okay, sure, I agree with that, I thought.

He continued, “Shouldn’t that be important? Shouldn’t that mean something to us? Shouldn’t that speak to the power and the beauty that comes with the gift of body?”

Well, yes, it should. But so what?

“So what?” It was like he read my mind. “It means that we are intended. It means that every single second that we are breathing, we are being held into existence by a God so loving that is surpasses all human thinking. It means that this life truly is a gift. You are on purpose.”

In the message of Genesis, Nick recounted, life just suddenly began. God opened life like a fire hydrant and everything just began... And he began it in a way that didn’t allow the Creator to just create and then step back- no, it is much more than that. The Creator began creating and just never stopped.

Life is not a series of gifts like we often assume; it is gift- every second of existence He is holding life there. He made humanity to be constantly looking to Himself, like a river where we are floating along, eyes up and palms open; where God can just give and give and give; where He can continue to create and create and create more.

The problem with humans is that we are stubborn. We have planted our feet in the river of life and are looking forward to what it is that we believe we need and how we can attain it. It is like we have suddenly entered fight or flight mode. We may plant our feet to fight the current of the river, moving them only to grab what we need before we flee for the next best thing. Perhaps we are even be able to walk easily with the current pushing us forward, but we only desire to find the next thing we feel that we need. This leads to frustration—when we cannot find what we are looking for or when the push of the current is too hard to work against; when we are tired of fight and we are tired of flight.

Couldn’t we call it fight, flight, or delight?

This is where Theology of the Body comes in, as Nick said, “where we must pick up our feet and float with our eyes up and palms open.” Why? So that God can do what God longs to do and give and give and give. Why? So that in turn we can give and give and give.

Think about those days when you come home in a terrible mood, for one reason or another, and even the sound of multiple people talking at once seems to frustrate you even more. Do you ever just get up and leave the room? How petty of humans are we, that we would compromise our own bodies’ abilities to experience those people currently in front of us because one thing may not have occurred just as we would have hoped? This is where I say we must delight—not fight or flight—but delight in life where we are at. Pick up your feet so that you can delight in what the Lord has given you this day.

The Theology of the Body says that we should give of ourselves because “It is not good that man should be alone” (Gn 2: 18). It says that we should wholly desire to experience people and new things and, moreover, to revel in the pleasures that come with these experiences! Pleasure is not bad thing; the Lord desires it for us as well. And pleasure is not meant to be the forbidden word in the dictionary of TOB, as we might assume. True pleasure is what happens when we use our bodies as they were made to be used. It is a good thing when we allow our bodies to experience pleasure, as we all long for fellowship with one another and the world; involving ourselves in the truth, the beauty, and the goodness we see in the people and places that surround us.

A big bonus to all of this? It immensely pleases God as well—even more than it pleases us, actually*.* It pleases God when we partake, bodies and all, in the gift of life that He is constantly creating. Each second there is a new creation in front of us, whether it be a particular person, a certain setting, or a good cup of coffee. All comes from God as it is He who is holding us in that very moment.

If you have not read the book You are Special by Max Lucado, you must. It is children’s book and a very easy, sweet read. While the plot does not involve Theology of the Body, there is a certain quote from the author that speaks volumes: “Next time a sunrise steals your breath or a meadow of flowers leaves you speechless, remain that way—say nothing and listen as heaven whispers, “Do you like it? I did it just for you.”

This quote is full of truth, particularly as it tells us to remain. One focus of Theology of the Body is learning to remain, to experience, to revel and delight. In other words, it is learning to receive so that later we might give. These experiences are not meant to be “a certain night (or day) set aside” like I had viewed Underground, but an all the time type of thing—a constant gift because life is constant gift. Life is experience, it is constant creation and it is constant love. We must engage our bodies in all of this to truly understand.

In the words of Saint Pope John Paul II, “The world you are inheriting is a world which desperately needs a new sense of brotherhood and human solidarity. It is a world which needs to be touched and healed by the beauty and richness of God’s love.” Experience it and then give.

***

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Ellen Petersen is a sophomore at Benedictine College studying Journalism and Mass Communications. In her free time she enjoys discovering new and eclectic coffee shops around the area, as well as baking, running, and watching The Lord of the Rings Trilogy on repeat.

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