Body and soul.

Alan recently lent me a cd to listen to, From Love, By Love, For Love, by Father Michael Schmitz.

I was blown away.

In the Protestant version of body and soul ideas, the spirit is the big deal.  Bodies are left behind, but the soul is forever.  In Catholicism, the emphasis is on both body and soul.  That one was new to me, and yeah, I've never really been the type to take special care of what I considered my shell.  No, I wasn't the type to abuse my body, but I never took much interest in it, other than (to be a snot) almost gloat over how much taller and built I was over most other folks.  Other than that, it was a shell, the outer layer of what I presented to the world.

I smoke.  Well, hopefully after today, it'll be the start of a lot of not smoking.  It's been a heckuva battle.  I started when I was young, to add a dimension of this tough girl image I was working to form.  I have a stupidly soft heart, and was afraid of being hurt, so smoking goes a long way to show how much of a hardcase one can be.  Or how stupid one can be.  I did quit before I married my ex-husband, and stayed smoke free for several years.  Then we got divorced, and I started again.

I'm thirty seven.  My mother has COPD.  My grandmother had emphysema.  My great-grandmother dipped snuff for years, and ended up with mouth cancer, which contributed to her death.  You'd think this would discourage me from smoking...

But now, we're gonna give it another shot.