WE LIVE IN an age of deep fragmentation. Like the ancient Gnostics, who believed in a deep divide between mind and body, we too are inclined to elevate the mind, or the spirit, over the body. The critic Harold Bloom once suggested that the religious practice of most Americans is “closer to ancient Gnostics than to early Christians.”
Ragan Sutterfield’s new memoir, This is My Body: From Obesity to Ironman, My Journey into the True Meaning of Flesh, Spirit, and Deeper Faith, recounts the story of his own struggles amid the fragmentation of our times. Having wrestled with being overweight since his childhood, Sutterfield eventually finds himself with a failing marriage and at his heaviest weight. He is faced with the incongruity that he is an environmentalist and farmer, doing grueling work to care for the land and creation, and yet taking poor care of his own body.
This is My Body is a compelling story of conversion, not unlike St. Augustine’s Confessions, as Sutterfield finds himself drawn out of the typical U.S. sort of Christianity that has little regard for the body and into a deeper faith in Christ, in which spirit and body are deeply interwoven. After the collapse of his first marriage, Sutterfield surrenders himself to the disciplines needed to care better for his body, specifically controlling his diet and becoming serious about exercise. From this conversion point onward, Sutterfield begins to learn and experience an incarnational faith in which our bodies cannot be taken for granted. He writes:
What if God ... became flesh and remains enfleshed? What if God not only has a heart that longs for our love but also a heart that pounds with blood? What if God has skin that drips with sweat? What if the God who offered his body as a sign of love also wants us to experience our bodies as a gift of ... love? Christians must worship a God who is all of these things because we worship a God who was made manifest to us in the human, embodied life of Jesus.
The journey into an incarnational faith that lies at the heart of this book eventually leads Sutterfield to begin training for the most grueling of all endurance events, the Ironman triathlon, a race consisting of more than 140 miles of swimming, biking, and running. Uniquely structured, This is My Body alternates chapters narrating Sutterfield’s larger conversion story with ones that focus on the particular story of preparing for the Ironman race. Although the book will definitely appeal to triathletes, runners, and other endurance athletes, and although it is in a similar vein to classics such as Born to Run and Eat and Run, the well-crafted storytelling and keen theological reflections on the Christian significance of our bodies make this a book that should be widely read among Christians.
Yes, the frank intensity of the chapters on training for the Ironman can, at times, become a wee bit overwhelming, but perhaps these stories serve as a type of the “large and startling figures” that Flannery O’Connor maintained were necessary to grab the attention of an apathetic audience. Too often we are indeed apathetic about our bodies, unwilling to wrestle with our desires—for particular kinds of food, for comfort that is averse to exercise, for particular images of bodies that we are fed in the media—and to begin the journey toward healthy personhood in body, mind, and spirit. Sutterfield’s journey, as chronicled in This is My Body, is a poignant reminder that though the way will be grueling, there is a deep joy in the health we experience in thoughtfully and faithfully caring for our bodies.
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