Reflection
If I change the way I look at things
The things I look at change
I think that's why the Bible seems
So changeable and strange
His word is like a magic mirror
Reflecting each man's heart
What I see in what I read
Depends on where I start
What I see depends in part
On what I think I know
Do I trust in my own thoughts
Or do I want to grow
I listen to the word of God
And hear what it should say
Conform it to my paradigms
And justify my way
And thinking I have seen the truth
I just see my reflection
A god who looks a lot like me
A god of self deception
http: //sjsterling.posterous.com

Movement, smell, vision, and other perceptual experiences are ways of thinking and orienting ourselves in the world. And yet the appeal to experience as resource for theology, though a significant shift in contemporary scholarship, has seldom received nuanced investigation. How do embodied differences like gender, race, disability, and sexuality highlight theological analysis and connect to perceptual experience and theological imagination? In Meaning in Our Bodies, Heike Peckruhn offers historical and cultural comparisons, showing how sensory experience may order normalcy, social status, or communal belonging. Ultimately, she argues that scholars who appeal to the importance of bodily experiences need to acquire a robust and nuanced understanding of how sensory perceptions and interactions are cultural and theological acts of making meaning.