We had a holiday on Thursday: Corpus Christi, which means "body of Christ," but no one around here seems to know exactly what we're celebrating. Failed catechisms. My favorite reflection on the day was found in my aforementioned new favorite book, Take This Bread, in which Sara Miles remembers her time in Corpus Christi, Mexico during the Corpus Christi Massacre, in which she reflects on a popular dicho, "en su propio carne." Or "in your own meat" literally, to live it in the flesh, as we might say, which I like the sound of. Living it in your own meat. The high call of the Gospel.
So I took advantage and rented a tiny cabin room on Lake Titicaca, took a couple books to guide me and spent two days in mostly quiet spaces. I listened and waited. I heard through the voices of psalmists and prophets cries from my own desperate depths. I scribbled journal pages of "excavation of self" (I think Keating uses this phrase in the Human Condition). I stopped running from all the things that are pushing in and threatening to crash. And I wish I could say I've come out with a regained sense of purpose and peace. The truth is, stillness most often gives way to honesty, and truth says I'm desperate, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked (rev. 3). And I feel it. Cold. Tired. Unseen and unseeing.
In the days since I feel like I've answered almost every question with, "I don't know," and almost every request with, "I just can't." Which is about all I can offer.
This is me in my own meat.
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