Leslie Flores

A Different Kind of Body Positivity

June 10th, 2018

When we talk about our bodies, it usually makes us uncomfortable: we probably immediately think about our insecurities, or our physical health, or maybe just the fact that we’re slightly hungry…

When we talk about the body in church, it is usually when someone needs healing. But our bodies are so much more than that. We are the temple of the Holy Spirit, regardless of whether we are healthy or not, hungry or not, whole or not.

Let us put on our theological goggles and think more deeply about our bodies. In Romans 12:1 Paul encourages us to present our bodies as living sacrifices. What does this mean? Can we physically take up the cross, as Christ told us?

I would argue that the most basic way to take up our cross, physically, is through the spiritual discipline of regular fasting. Fasting is the sacrificing of food in search of something greater; intimacy with God.

The first post in this series will focus on fasting for the body, and the following posts will center around fasting for the mind, fasting for the spirit, and lastly, some practical advice for how to fast.

Spirit = Good, Body = Bad?

In the first and second centuries, there was a group of people who twisted ideas from Christianity into something called Gnosticism. They taught that the spirit realm was good, and that the physical realm was evil. They rejected their bodies because they wanted their souls to escape and be free. We still tend to think this way as Christians!

However, considering the fact that a disembodied soul, or an inanimate–soulless–body, is in fact, dead, we know that can’t be right. When sin entered the world with Adam and Eve, it introduced death into creation. That was not the original plan: we were created to be eternal.

Modern society would say that all we have is our bodies, so we may as well experience as much goodness and pleasure as we can in our short lifetimes. Many religions, on the other hand, from Buddhism to Scientology would say we must reject and be liberated from the physical world. At either extreme, it is about escape from suffering.

A Theology of Suffering

My choir teacher in Bible college used to tell us, “Embrace the dissonance.” The dissonance in the music we were singing, chords that hung in the air in tension, waiting to be resolved, served as a metaphor for the tensions and pains of life. In our lives, we must embrace the dissonance.

Christianity is the only religion that actually embraces suffering. Jesus came to earth specifically to suffer and die, and His bodily resurrection from the dead has sanctified our suffering so that it transforms us more into His likeness. In fact, the Christian hope for eternity is not simply to be in heaven where there is no suffering, but it is a hope for resurrection of the body, just like Christ was resurrected into a new, glorified body. (See 1 Corinthians 15.)

We really don’t like to suffer though, so we reject or ignore our bodies. After all, our main suffering usually comes through the body: hunger, thirst, tiredness, sexual desire, illness, physical pain. So, if we are already suffering in this present life, why would we want to add more suffering to the plate by willfully choosing to give up food for a day? This is because although we suffer through our bodies, it is not because of our bodies. We suffer because of the flesh.

It’s All Greek to Me…

Linguistically, in English, the words body and flesh are interchangeable: we even speak of Jesus as God in-the-flesh. Yet this is not what the flesh refers to in the New Testament. In Greek the flesh is sarx, and the body is soma. The difference between them is that the body (soma), is created by God, fashioned by His very hands, and redeemed in Christ. The flesh (sarx), is the sinful nature, which affects every aspect of human life; the spirit (pneuma), the mind (psyche), and the body (soma).

Gregory of Nyssa refers to Adam and Eve’s tunics of animal skin as representative of our sinful nature. (Genesis 3:21) Just like the story of Pandora’s Box, it is with these ‘tunics of skin’ that came all the sin and decay we know in life. And it is this sinful nature that we want to be rid of.

Paul tells us in Romans 13:14 “Clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh (sarx).”

We will look more deeply at how fasting cultivates self-control in regards to fleshly desires in the next post. But to conclude this portion, we see that one way we can clothe ourselves in Christ is to choose to fast regularly. Fasting is a regular physical reminder to us of Christ’s sacrifice, and our own imitation of Him. We don’t fast to punish the body because of our wrong desires. We fast in order to live like Christ, and the Holy Spirit supernaturally makes us more like Him in the process.

(This is Part One of a series on fasting. Part Two is here, and Part Three is here.
Consumer or Consumed?

March 4th, 2018

Have you ever read articles of “solutions” for Christian singlehood? I, myself, have read far too many. They usually say things like, “While you’re waiting, here are a few things you can do: serve the church with all that extra free time you’ve got, find a career you really love, and make sure you get plenty of exercise.”

Is this truly the best we can hope for? Don’t think about it too much and maybe you’ll meet someone while you’re stacking chairs after youth group. Distraction. Busyness. Diffusion. Repression. Just find any way to pass the time.

James talks about the conflicts and disputes happening in his church, and he says it is because of the “cravings at war within them.” (James 4:1, NRSV) Verse 3 says

You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures.

What is it that I am passionate about? Do I live my life in such a way so that I satisfy my desires, my passions? Do I “treat myself” a little too often? Am I pursuing a career because it’s something I’m passionate about? What about a relationship? Am I serving the church because I am passionate about it? Or is all of this because I am passionate about Christ?

I want to be a person who does not live life to satisfy her passions, but to be one who is consumed by the Passion of Christ.

Ask yourself whether your desires are ruling you.

Verse 5 says

Or do you suppose that it is for nothing that the scripture says, “God yearns jealously for the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”?

You think your desires burn unbearably within you, your dreams and promises from God; you’ve got NOTHING on the Spirit of God. HE burns within you, and He yearns jealously for YOU. You do know that those good desires come from God Himself?

Do you not realize that this is what Psalm 37:4 means?

Delight yourself in the LORD, and He will give you the desires of your heart.

It means, not that He will give you what you want, but that He will put NEW desires in your heart; holy desires, an irresistible desire for Him. We must find ourselves in the space where, even if we have none of the things that we desire so greatly, we find we are deeply satisfied in Christ.

Let the fire of the Holy Spirit set your heart aflame. I have seen radical transformation in my own life, because I let God give me the desires of my heart.

Whether my desires are fulfilled or unfulfilled for the moment, I remain satisfied in Christ. The despair of waiting can’t take away from the joy, and the sweetness of fulfillment won’t sway me from my love of Christ.

Let your affections be for Him only. Learn to be sustained by sufficiency of Christ.
Sleeping in a Storm

September 28th, 2017

How can Christ be enough?

Growing up in church, I always wondered what people meant when they said that Christ was enough, that He was all they needed. How can this be, when we need food, oxygen, water, sleep, money, clothes, shelter? Love? What if I don’t have one or more of these things?

The challenge for me lately in settling in here has been trying not to pull my hair out while I wait for all the annoying banking/financial things to take care of themselves. and on top of that feeling vaguely disoriented all the time because I don’t quite have a routine.

I cannot make my check clear in my bank account. And I cannot settle into a routine if I’ve only been here less than a month! These things simply take time.

Today I had to just lean into Jesus, because I have no control.

When we talk about the story of Jesus calming the storm in Matthew 8, we always focus on how marvelous it was that He calmed the storm. Imagine that, changing the weather! What Irish people wouldn’t give for a little bit of that power for themselves.

But many times we focus on this because we wish for our suffering to end, whether it’s waiting for a check to clear or something bigger and more painful. But every religion in the world can give you ideas for how to escape suffering.

The thing that makes Jesus Christ different from every other religion in the world is that He actually entered into suffering, He chose it because of His love for us. And His suffering was far greater than any of us will ever encounter in our lives.

What stands out to me in this story is that Jesus was sleeping, in the midst of a storm! Jesus was tranquil, unaffected by what was raging around Him. He knew He was safe, despite what his circumstances would have told Him. He knew He was safe because He was in the Father’s love, and that is the safest place to be.

I pondered the love of Jesus this morning, and how I’ve actually found that it is indeed enough.

The love of Jesus has the power to transform even the bleakest of circumstances into a situation where I can feel whole, where I can feel safe. I may have many practical needs and a list of prayer requests, but I find myself wanting nothing when His love pervades my soul.

He may not always calm the storm or lift the heavy curtain of rain, or make my check clear faster in the bank, but within that I can remain as tranquil as Jesus was when He was asleep in a storm.

The love of Jesus transcends beyond this present moment and plunges deep, very deep into my soul.
For Rashel.

April 17th, 2016

I love The Fumbally. In Dublin I went multiple times a week, sometimes for breakfast. I’d order the same every time–eggs and a flat white, for here please–and I’d sit with my Bible and slowly savor everything. But what kept me coming back was the pure atmosphere of love. Often people would walk in and enfold someone in a warm and tight embrace. I’ve never seen so much love in a café.

As an introvert, especially on days off, it is not my nature to converse with someone who’s serving me coffee or breakfast. But I grew to love that place because of the people in it, and I learned names and chatted and tried to show them how much I cared for them.

Rashel was one of those people.

Yesterday was hard. Rashel Winn, of The Fumbally, passed away on her 29th birthday. She had cancer.

Sadness and grief have been weighing heavily on me since I heard. Since I learned of her cancer she was always covered in my prayers. And I can’t believe she’s gone.

I barely knew her; she was my barista. She was ‘just’ my barista, you might say. But there is more to it.

When trying to reconcile why my heart hurts so much to lose someone I hardly knew, I see now how I have been deeply moved by the love and care that was poured into every aspect of The Fumbally. The food is amazing and the coffee is the best of the best.

Beyond that, the people who work there are a family, and the people who inhabit those mismatched chairs share a common desire for love and excellence over convenience and efficiency. It is an art form, putting your soul into something to give another soul, to be nourished and refreshed by it. There is a fellowship around food and coffee that cannot be recreated. Food unites us and we become better simply by living alongside each other.

Such a personal place, The Fumbally became somewhere I fit in, because everyone was so comfortable in their individuality. It’s not about being hipster, because you could call it that. It’s a place where you can be yourself, and that is good enough. You can wear your trendy athleisure clothes and Nikes and matte nude lipstick, or you can wear Birkenstocks and daisies and big glasses, and regardless, you will belong.

I found a home at The Fumbally I never realized I was looking for.

I flourished as a person because of my time there. And it could not have been if it weren’t for people like Rashel. The first time I talked to her, I came in to ask about barista courses and we ended up talking for almost twenty minutes. It was so fun to have someone from home there; she had lived in Seattle for a while so she just ‘got’ me.

She was wonderful. She was hilarious and sweet and bright and a joy to say hello to those mornings. Her coffee was amazing. She made me a coffee once that tasted of forest berries and black tea and it bowled me over because it was so deliciously unexpected.

The last coffee I had there was made by Rashel. She had just been to Italy for barista camp and created an amazing peacock rosetta in my flat white.

I thank God for that place. I miss it constantly and have even dreamed multiple times of being there again. My heart hurts so much for those who knew her as part of the Fambully, and I look forward to the day I go back home to heavy wooden tables and coffee cups full of love.

A Different Kind of Body Positivity

Spirit = Good, Body = Bad?

A Theology of Suffering

It’s All Greek to Me…

Consumer or Consumed?

Let your affections be for Him only. Learn to be sustained by sufficiency of Christ.

Sleeping in a Storm

For Rashel.