My Body and Other Crumbling Empires: Lessons for Healing in a World That Is Sick
By Lyndsey Medford
Broadleaf Books, 2023, 227 Pages
On my busiest days as I am rushing from one thing to the next, the fact that my body has needs or experiences pain can feel like an obstacle. Sometimes I forget that I am not a machine, that my body’s need for rest and care is not my body working against me. I forget that my body impacts the world and the world impacts my body. Taking time to cook a healthy meal can feel like a chore. Going for a long walk in the sunshine can feel like a waste of time. Catching a cold can feel like I just need to push through. But when I treat my body this way, I am more likely to treat other people and the rest of creation with the same lack of care, viewing them as either impediments or as means to achieving my goals. There is a correlation between how connected I am with my body and with the created world around me, which makes sense because my body and the world are connected to each other.
In My Body and Other Crumbling Empires, Lyndsey Medford reflects on the systems of our bodies in relation to the environmental, economic, food, and healthcare systems of our world, particularly in the United States. She reminds readers of the all-encompassing reality of sin, which breaks our relationship not only with God but also with each other, our own selves, and the rest of creation. At the same time, Medford’s exploration of how we might heal equally reminds us of how, as new creations in Christ, we are invited to participate in repairing all that has been broken. She draws on the wisdom of many others who have engaged in this work before her, including Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision of “beloved community,” many Indigenous traditions of learning from creation, and disability theologians’ insights into listening to our own bodies. While Medford writes from the perspective of her experience with a chronic illness, her work is instructive for all of us as embodied beings. She reminds us of the goodness of our finitude, our connection to each other and creation, and how our bodies can be our greatest teachers.
Throughout the book, Medford shows how the systems of our bodies are interconnected microcosms of the systems of the world. For example, she describes how in watching a hurricane churn toward her hometown, she recognized similarities to her own body’s autoimmune flare-up. Just as our bodies cry out for care when they are in pain, so too the earth cries out in pain in the form of increasingly violent natural disasters. Medford writes, “After the hurricane, I found in every swelling joint, in every open pustule of skin, grief—the grief of the world. I felt the rage of the ocean washing through my own inflamed blood vessels. And I vowed to honor it all.” Medford describes how just as she has honored her body by striving to better listen to what her body needs, she has honored the world by listening to what the world needs. In doing so, she has grown in her awareness of how the health of each of our bodies is intimately related to our care for each other and all of creation.
As the world around us continues to rage with sicknesses of exploitation, greed, disease, oppression, and injustices of all kinds, all of our bodies are impacted (some more directly and consequentially than others). Children are malnourished, people don’t have access to clean water, pollution poisons our bodies and food sources, and people lose their livelihoods and lives because of natural disasters and climate change. Medford invites us to locate ourselves within the systems of the world, encouraging us to consider where we have power within. How are we contributing to the sickness of the world, and how is the sickness of the world contributing to our own sickness? We need to name where we hurt before we can begin the work of healing.
As my flourishing and the world’s are bound to each other, Medford helps me consider how I might be more intentional about my embodied existence in the world in order to better care for myself, others, and the created world. Medford inspires me to nurture the small systems in my life, like befriending my finitude and fragility, knowing my neighbors, tending my garden, and listening to my body. At the same time, her work encourages me to take seriously my participation in the larger systems in which I exist by making decisions with the flourishing of others in mind, being rooted in my local community, knowing where my food comes from, and making intentional choices about where and how I spend my money.
My Body and Other Crumbling Empires is an illuminating reflection on the interconnectedness between ourselves and the world. Our connection to one another and between our bodies and creation is our greatest resource for healing. This means our own bodies already know what we need to heal, if only we would listen.
This review was first published in the Covenant Companion Summer 2026 issue, the official magazine of the Evangelical Covenant Church.
