Originally published: Jossey-Bass, 2002. This edition includes new author biography.

Includes bibliographical preferences and index.

Awakening to sacred vulnerability -- Pondering the mystery of the body -- Bathing the body -- Clothing the body -- Nourishing the body -- Blessing our table life -- Exerting and resting the body -- Honoring the sexual body -- Honoring the suffering body.

In Honoring the Body, Stephanie Paulsell speaks to those who have ever wondered how to celebrate the body's pleasures and protect the body's vulnerabilities in a world that seems confused about both. What we need, she shows, are practices that honor the body. Paulsell invites readers to explore how we might honor the body in daily activities - -bathing, clothing, eating, working, exercising, loving, and suffering -- seeking wisdom from Scripture, history, and contemporary experience, in story and song and poetry. She argues that the accumulated wisdom of religious traditions provides the resources for a rich practice of honoring the body. This practice will not be just an individual practice, however. It will be a shared, communal practice, one we engage in with others. Honoring the Body is for those who want to honor their body and the bodies of others, who wish for a community that cherishes, attends to, celebrates, and soothes the body.