Oscar Wilde famously said, "I drink to separate my body from my soul." He would not be the only one to try such a futile endeavor, to think she might unshackle her soul from the body's cage with magical key-shaped elixirs, to think, erroneously, that the cage and the prisoner are two different things.
It's one thing to believe in mind-body-spirit connectedness when you possess a healthy, young body.
But imagine you have a body that really feels like a cage--a body with a horrible or chronic disease like ALS or Cystic Fibrosis, or a body that doesn't suit the norms of beauty, or an infertile body. Then, you'd like nothing more than to cleave your soul from its fickle sinew. Your body feels like a betrayal, a jailhouse instead of a home. It can make you angry.
For example, if you can't translate the following sentence into standard English without help, then I don't want to talk to you about my body and I don't want your illiterate platitudes:
The AVG DPO for a BFP is 12.6 and symptoms leading up to a BFP may include increased CM and moodiness, although these symptoms also mimic those of AF, so your DH may have to remain sensitive during the TTW, and you may get a false BFN because your HCG levels haven't reached a high enough level for even a FRER.
But if you're trying to have a baby, like me, you're fluent in the language of neurosis and can play translator without batting an eyelid:
The average day past ovulation for a Big Fat Positive is 12.6 and symptoms leading up to a Big Fat Positive may include increased cervical mucus and moodiness, although these symptoms also mimic those of Aunt Flow, so your Dear Hubby may have to remain sensitive during the Two Week Wait, and you may get a false Big Fat Negative because your human chorionic gonadotropin levels haven't reached a high enough level for even a First Response Early Response pregnancy test.
And still, you may have the words and not the meaning. You may not know there exists an entire culture of women who speak this language to each other, that use acronyms both as a form of intimacy and a form of shame and silence. You may not know that the preoccupation with a body that's not working the way you want it to work, and its relentless chatter in the form of aches and pains and ghost symptoms, can be one of the most soul-killing experiences a human might endure.
Sometimes I want to unzip my spirit from its skin, like a dirty dress that I've worn to too many events in the same week. More often, though, I have the opposite and counter-intuitive reaction: I want to keep wearing that dress until the stench and lint and sweat stains mirror what they clothe.
What's this got to do with God? Well, don't worry--I'm not going to talk about those Old Testament matriarchs who suffered so mightily from infertility they offered their aged husbands Egyptian concubines only to have God grant them a baby in their 90s or something absurd like that. Those myths have their magic, but they irritate you when you want a baby yourself because science shows I don't have until my 90s, God or IVF nonwithstanding. The only thing I like about any of the stories is the moment Sarah laughs at the prophets who foresee Isaac. I like to imagine she scoffs more than giggles. Like, "Yeah, right, Yahweh."
No, I'm going to talk about poets, specifically Christian Wiman and Mark Doty. The former suffered from bone cancer, the latter the death of his partner from AIDS. The body is familiar if painful territory for both men.
And then I'll talk about the incarnate word, spirit made flesh in the form of Jesus.
The title poem to Wiman's most recent book of poetry speaks to the broken body, or, rather, the brokenness of all things earthly. I admire most its form, how well it responds to the poem's content--the repeated line, broken in various ways until its last utterance when it is no longer riven but whole, without the fractures and sprains of commas or dashes:
In the museums we used to visit on family vacations when I was a kid, I used to love those rooms which displayed collections of minerals in a kind of closet or chamber which would, at the push of a button, darken. Then ultraviolet lights would begin to glow and the minerals would seem to come alive, new colors, new possibilities and architectures revealed. Plain stones became fantastic, "futuristic"--a strange word which suggests, accurately, that these colors had something of the world to come about them. Of course there wasn't any black light in the center of the earth, in the caves where they were quarried; how strange that these stones should have to be brought here, bathed with this unnatural light in order for their transcendent characters to emerge. Irradiation revealed a secret aspect of the world.
Imagine illness as that light: demanding, torturous, punitive, it nonetheless reveals more of what things are. A certain glow of being appears. I think this is what is meant when we speculate that death is what makes love possible. Not that things need to be able to die in order for us to love them, but that things need to die in order for us to know what they are. Could we really know anything that wasn't transient, not becoming more itself in the strange, unearthly light of dying? The button pushed, the stones shine, all mystery and beauty, implacable, fierce, austere.
Imagine illness as that light.
Imagine our bodies, healthy or sick or momentarily struggling, as the light of God.
Imagine we might need affliction to illuminate our souls. (know, in this imagining, the unfairness of such a reality on some, truly sick people)
Imagine we could not have a soul without a body.
Imagine the necessity of Jesus' human body.
Then the body cannot be a shade of shame or a thing to denounce. Then the body cannot be a cage, and drinking, dear Oscar Wilde, might be more for marrying our bodies to our souls than separating them. Then the body has no use for a language of signs and signals and acronyms.
The flesh is the word, the word is the flesh.
Even, and especially, when the flesh is broken.
Amen.
It's one thing to believe in mind-body-spirit connectedness when you possess a healthy, young body.
But imagine you have a body that really feels like a cage--a body with a horrible or chronic disease like ALS or Cystic Fibrosis, or a body that doesn't suit the norms of beauty, or an infertile body. Then, you'd like nothing more than to cleave your soul from its fickle sinew. Your body feels like a betrayal, a jailhouse instead of a home. It can make you angry.
For example, if you can't translate the following sentence into standard English without help, then I don't want to talk to you about my body and I don't want your illiterate platitudes:
The AVG DPO for a BFP is 12.6 and symptoms leading up to a BFP may include increased CM and moodiness, although these symptoms also mimic those of AF, so your DH may have to remain sensitive during the TTW, and you may get a false BFN because your HCG levels haven't reached a high enough level for even a FRER.
But if you're trying to have a baby, like me, you're fluent in the language of neurosis and can play translator without batting an eyelid:
The average day past ovulation for a Big Fat Positive is 12.6 and symptoms leading up to a Big Fat Positive may include increased cervical mucus and moodiness, although these symptoms also mimic those of Aunt Flow, so your Dear Hubby may have to remain sensitive during the Two Week Wait, and you may get a false Big Fat Negative because your human chorionic gonadotropin levels haven't reached a high enough level for even a First Response Early Response pregnancy test.
And still, you may have the words and not the meaning. You may not know there exists an entire culture of women who speak this language to each other, that use acronyms both as a form of intimacy and a form of shame and silence. You may not know that the preoccupation with a body that's not working the way you want it to work, and its relentless chatter in the form of aches and pains and ghost symptoms, can be one of the most soul-killing experiences a human might endure.
Sometimes I want to unzip my spirit from its skin, like a dirty dress that I've worn to too many events in the same week. More often, though, I have the opposite and counter-intuitive reaction: I want to keep wearing that dress until the stench and lint and sweat stains mirror what they clothe.
What's this got to do with God? Well, don't worry--I'm not going to talk about those Old Testament matriarchs who suffered so mightily from infertility they offered their aged husbands Egyptian concubines only to have God grant them a baby in their 90s or something absurd like that. Those myths have their magic, but they irritate you when you want a baby yourself because science shows I don't have until my 90s, God or IVF nonwithstanding. The only thing I like about any of the stories is the moment Sarah laughs at the prophets who foresee Isaac. I like to imagine she scoffs more than giggles. Like, "Yeah, right, Yahweh."
No, I'm going to talk about poets, specifically Christian Wiman and Mark Doty. The former suffered from bone cancer, the latter the death of his partner from AIDS. The body is familiar if painful territory for both men.
And then I'll talk about the incarnate word, spirit made flesh in the form of Jesus.
The title poem to Wiman's most recent book of poetry speaks to the broken body, or, rather, the brokenness of all things earthly. I admire most its form, how well it responds to the poem's content--the repeated line, broken in various ways until its last utterance when it is no longer riven but whole, without the fractures and sprains of commas or dashes:
Every Riven Thing
God goes, belonging to every riven thing he’s made
sing his being simply by being
the thing it is:
stone and tree and sky, man who sees and sings and wonders why
sing his being simply by being
the thing it is:
stone and tree and sky, man who sees and sings and wonders why
God goes. Belonging, to every riven thing he’s made,
means a storm of peace.
Think of the atoms inside the stone.
Think of the man who sits alone
trying to will himself into the stillness where
means a storm of peace.
Think of the atoms inside the stone.
Think of the man who sits alone
trying to will himself into the stillness where
God goes belonging. To every riven thing he’s made
there is given one shade
shaped exactly to the thing itself:
under the tree a darker tree;
under the man the only man to see
there is given one shade
shaped exactly to the thing itself:
under the tree a darker tree;
under the man the only man to see
God goes belonging to every riven thing. He’s made
the things that bring him near,
made the mind that makes him go.
A part of what man knows,
apart from what man knows,
the things that bring him near,
made the mind that makes him go.
A part of what man knows,
apart from what man knows,
God goes belonging to every riven thing he’s made.
Christian Wiman, from Every Riven Thing (2010).
And I'm thinking of the prologue to Mark Doty's memoir, Heaven's Coast, where he re-positions a childhood memory into the most breathtaking metaphor:In the museums we used to visit on family vacations when I was a kid, I used to love those rooms which displayed collections of minerals in a kind of closet or chamber which would, at the push of a button, darken. Then ultraviolet lights would begin to glow and the minerals would seem to come alive, new colors, new possibilities and architectures revealed. Plain stones became fantastic, "futuristic"--a strange word which suggests, accurately, that these colors had something of the world to come about them. Of course there wasn't any black light in the center of the earth, in the caves where they were quarried; how strange that these stones should have to be brought here, bathed with this unnatural light in order for their transcendent characters to emerge. Irradiation revealed a secret aspect of the world.
Imagine illness as that light: demanding, torturous, punitive, it nonetheless reveals more of what things are. A certain glow of being appears. I think this is what is meant when we speculate that death is what makes love possible. Not that things need to be able to die in order for us to love them, but that things need to die in order for us to know what they are. Could we really know anything that wasn't transient, not becoming more itself in the strange, unearthly light of dying? The button pushed, the stones shine, all mystery and beauty, implacable, fierce, austere.
Imagine illness as that light.
Imagine our bodies, healthy or sick or momentarily struggling, as the light of God.
Imagine we might need affliction to illuminate our souls. (know, in this imagining, the unfairness of such a reality on some, truly sick people)
Imagine we could not have a soul without a body.
Imagine the necessity of Jesus' human body.
Then the body cannot be a shade of shame or a thing to denounce. Then the body cannot be a cage, and drinking, dear Oscar Wilde, might be more for marrying our bodies to our souls than separating them. Then the body has no use for a language of signs and signals and acronyms.
The flesh is the word, the word is the flesh.
Even, and especially, when the flesh is broken.
Amen.
brave and stoic, but not complacent.
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Beautiful, heart-wrenching, and brave, that's my girl! Mama
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