Ablutions

Our lives are never what we think they are. Not completely. As St. Paul wrote a long time ago, "we see in part." And how we see ourselves is likely alien to how others see us. Oh sure, we may strike the same broad strokes from time to time. But mostly we see one another packaged in the wrapping of our own preconceptions.

People have an atmosphere about them like little enfleshed worlds. Meaty brains, numinous minds, and a slew of identities. There's the doctor with his bow tie and his black bag. We know he's a sharp dresser. We know he knows medical science. I enjoy his dry sense of humor, but I have no idea what he thinks of me. But when he woke up this morning he padded his way to bathroom sink and washed the sleep from his eyes. Or some variation on this theme. Maybe he went to the kitchen sink. Maybe he lives by a lake and every morning he dips himself ritually into the near frozen murk as an offering to the gods. He may have dreamed... most likely he did, though he never remembers them. Or maybe he does. He writes in voluminous journals vivid accounts of worlds that melt and bleed into one another, cloud rays and sun showers and stars as cold and soft as snowflakes...

I will never know, entirely. But I can imagine.

It is the same with me. I put on my identity with my trousers and my button up shirt and I go to work. This morning I scraped the ice off my windshield. I smelled hickory burning from some faraway fireplace (and at once I was young again, my dad alive again, and we in his workshop and we making wooden candle sticks shaped like stars and painted red and green just for my mom...). You, sir or madam, pass me in the hall, I smile, look you in the eye, say hello... Or maybe I'm feeling bashful and I look down. To inflict you with my aspect, my eyes, my analysis is something I wish to spare you. And anyway maybe I don't want you inside. Who knows what might be betrayed in a handful of moments? What part of me will been seen that I want hidden? We all have those parts... and we cover them, each in our own way.

The post-modern thinker is aware of context. We have our layers of influence and identity. Our very thoughts are poured within the urn of our place and time. We don't hear it often, but there is always the swishing sound of disturbed waters we carry...

Do you remember the strange story in the Gospel of John about the man waiting by the pool? The man is a "paralytic," and he tells Jesus that he is waiting by the pool because an angel will come and stir up the waters. Being lowered into these waters brings about healing. I wondered how long this man would have waited for that angel? "But I have no one to help me into the water," he said to Jesus. And of course Jesus heals the man. But it is interesting that he never asked Jesus to heal him. In this gospel, miracles are known as "signs." Semeia. The man never saw the angel... never waded into those wing brushed waters... but he took up his mat and walked away... disturbed water and all...