This is my body

Six weeks ago yesterday, I went in to a small community hospital twenty-eight minutes from my home, gave my name, birthdate, and consent to the people working there, and they let me sleep for two hours.

Parenthood is hard, man. You will literally give up an organ for a few uninterrupted hours of sleep.

And I lost two pounds.

Or had it removed.

This morning as I sit, typing in the dark, I realize that I, the "I" that I was afraid of losing through this surgery, is still here. My self, my identity, me. Still here. And what's more, I don't leak.

And, because I am still me, I have been wondering about what this means. Not so much that my identity survived a hysterectomy, but that I was afraid it wouldn't. 

I am circling an idea. An idea that involves the body and the spirit and Eucharist. Having a functional brain would help with parsing it out, but I am just sure that there is a sinew and bone connection to the spirit. In New Seeds of Contemplation Thomas Merton writes, "the 'I' that works in the world, thinks about itself, observes its own reactions and talks about itself is not the true 'I' that has been united to God in Christ."

My experiment in corporeal excision supports this statement, but something within me baulks. I know I am setting myself up for ridicule. There is a pretty hard and fast rule against arguing about spirituality with persons who have taken a vow of silence. I am not accusing him of being wrong. I am just offering this: it is through my body that I have brought life into the world, and, although my womb has been removed, I still feel the generative impulse of my body. 

It is in the breaking of the body that we remember Jesus and the poignancy of the Christ.

Like I said...I don't have this one all parsed out. But there is something there.