The Politics of Self-Care

To Indulge Ourselves is to Preserve Ourselves: For the Work is Never Done.

In religious circles, self-indulgence is practically a dirty word. When the building you’re in is on fire, you don’t have time to take a bath or get a massage. You’ve got work to do!

And if you did, by chance, give yourself permission for a little bit of self-pampering, you can rest assured that there will be a part of you that is having none of it — and that part of you will be complaining to God in words something like this: “Lord, do you not care that my lazy half has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell that part of me, then, to get with the program!”

But just as Jesus defended Mary against the anxious judgment of her sister Martha, perhaps Jesus will be the one to come to our aid when we are excoriating ourselves for being self-indulgent.

And if Jesus won’t stand up on our behalf, we could always take refuge in the wisdom of the sister outsider herself, the black lesbian activist and poet Audre Lorde. Speaking in the language of confrontation that is so often the voice of political struggle, Lorde has this to say about the work of self-care:

Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.

Like many, I suppose, in the contemplative world, I tend to shy away from language that emphasizes conflict and violence and hostility — I may recognize the importance of appropriate self-preservation as much as anyone else, but I have a hard time calling it an act of warfare. I’m into loving your enemies and doing good to those who curse you, after all. But we could call self-preservation an act of contemplative activism, and that would make as much sense to us as all the warrior rhetoric would make to folks in the mainstream.

Here’s the bottom line: taking good care of yourself is a sacred act, because it equips you to do all the things that spiritually enlightened people are meant to do: to care for others, to stand up for what’s right, to serve the Spirit by caring for those in need. These things are challenging. Without a judicious amount of tender self-care, we’ll soon face discouragement and then we’ll give up on the fight.

So don’t apologize when you indulge yourself. Instead, acknowledge that you are equipping yourself for the important work to come.

Source: Audre Lorde, A Burst of Light: And Other Essays. Courier Dover Publications, 2017, p. 130.