Linda Hogan Body

How important is the body to religious practice? Scholars have debated this issue for centuries. The autobiographies of Linda Hogan and Etty Hillesum tackle this issue. Their writing shows that the body is an essential part of religious experience. Hogan’s and Hillesum’s writing shows that the body is important because it holds memory, contains traces of ancestors, is an expression of emotion and desire, and it allows us to perform sacred acts. Linda Hogan talks about the importance of the body in that it stores memory.
Linda Hogan writes a lot about memory and identity in her autobiography The Woman Who Watches Over the World. For Native Americans, their religion encapsulates their entire life. The psychical is just as important as the spiritual. Hogan writes …show more content…
Even though she couldn’t save them, she was devoted to making life more enjoyable for them. “Few people (then and now) appear to experience their work as a central spiritual practice (McGuire, Packet Page 61). Work was a deeply spiritual practice for her. She viewed working and helping make people’s life better for even a second as an expression of her faith. She could have tried to escape or gone into hiding, but she was determined to treat as many people with kindness and help God with his plan on earth until the moment she died.
We may be spiritual beings, but we are also physical beings. The writings of Linda Hogan and Etty Hillesum are prime examples of how our bodies can be used to experience the sacred and to enact our religious beliefs. Throughout their autobiographies, they use their bodies to store memory, connect with their ancestors, connect with their emotions and desires, and to perform sacred acts. Women have been criticized by religious men for being more connected to the physical, corruptible world. Linda Hogan and Etty Hillesum show being connected to the physical world isn’t always a negative religious