Kissing the Wounds


I belong to a study group headed by Dr. Brugh Joy, a physician and pattern psychologist. We have a web site where we communicate with each other. We always have a current theme around which our thinking orbits, for the more extraverted, or on which we meditate, for the more introverted. The current theme is the story of St. Francis overcoming his horror of lepers by "kissing the wounds," sort of like the way G. Gordon Liddy overcame his fear of rats by hunting one down, killing it and eating it.

But St. Francis was more subtle in his thinking. He had a horror of lepers, which might be considered just good sense as leprosy is contagious. We must all rot but we'd prefer not to do it socially. So the solution he devised, of kissing the leper's wounding as a way of being a more perfect vessel of God's love, had some logical flaws from a conventional standpoint.

I was thinking about the act of kissing the wounds, as are others in the group, looking for the gold at the heart of the story. The most obvious way to think of it is that he was sort of like one of those Tennessee snake handlers, who get into a frenzy of faith and dare poison to puncture their balloon of faith. There are cultural differences of course but the pattern is the same: with enough faith you have power over matter. Whether it's a rattlesnake or leprosy, it's serious business. The more expanded, or metaphorical view, is that some people love others so much they lose perspective on the benign indifference of reality.

In the meantime, one of our group has been battling cancer. I found that I wasn't connecting with this person, and assumed it is because we don't know each other all that well. I know some group members better than others. But then I caught a glimpse of something when I read a post by the person which deserved at least a cursory reply, of accepting an invitation to witness the situation.

It wasn't my business to say anything; let the women do it. They do the nurturing.

It was one of those moments of seeing the shadow side of myself. I realized that I was avoiding this person because I don't know how to approach cancer. It scares me, and separating myself from somebody who has it is sort of like St. Francis separating himself from the lepers, except that so far as we know cancer isn't contagious. We separate ourselves from disease because we separate ourselves from death. Our denial of it is assumed to be a kind of healthy, positive thinking attitude. Sickness and death aren't invited to dinner. lest they poison the atmosphere.

Death becomes something which happens to other people, and in my mind, even I am another person in the far away city where death finds me. It's a fantasy story, my death, lending itself to poetry and mystery and theories of how to survive it. So far it's waiting which is why I think it's a waiter. At some point I'll order the salmon mousse.

In examining the story of St. Francis, and my reluctance to engage someone I don't know very well because of the cancer, the gold in the story came through. By kissing the wounds St. Francis erased the distance between health and illness, life and death. It was the fear of his own mortality that caused his aversion to the lepers, and my aversion to socializing with cancer that caused my difficulty communicating fearlessly.

Of course there are many kinds of fear, some of them specific to sub cultures. In the subculture of new age psychology, the important thing with somebody who is facing disease and, if there is no remission, death, is not to say, but to listen, when one is asked to witness. It's a matter of making space for the other person, and not trying to do something for them. Again, this seems to me to be obvious to someone who is introverted, but not so obvious to an extravert.

So there is a fear of not following a prescribed path. I don't want to be seen as crass and clueless.

And then there is the fear of saying the wrong thing, of being insincere or unintentionally hurtful. And so in the face of death I think we restrain ourselves from saying much that isn't one-sided. There are prayers and there are poems bathing in perfume. There is protocol. But death is an expanding out of control of the personal. The solemn and inert mood is of the remains. Parts of us may die because we are afraid to let them live in the eyes of others. But that's how egos are made and shadows cast. It is the condition of our society. Some people howl like animals at death.

Linda told me once that we shut off parts of ourselves because they are inconvenient, or because other people disapprove of them. "Then all kinds of things get caught in the net that you'd never want to get rid of," she said. She advises me against shutting off parts of myself. It reminds me of Quentin Crisp's instruction: "Every morning when you get up and look at yourself in the mirror, say, 'Other people are a mistake.'"

So I ventured into a conversation with cancer which included Burrough's line: "When I become death,death is the seed from which I grow." I wanted to break through my fear, masquerading as a concerned sobriety, and begin to come to terms with my own mortality. Oh, I know it's not a sudden thing. It's a long process, and there's even an idea that the thing to do is get a younger woman and a sports car and work out a lot, so that old age can be staved off by the preservation of youth.

Of course what is being preserved is not youth, more like an image trapped at the event horizon of a black hole.

I think it is the breaking down of the barrier between life and death that causes old people to be happier than younger people. Depression intensifies and peaks between forty and fifty, as one has completed denial, anger bargaining and depression. Acceptance takes awhile I guess. There's always the engineering department figuring out a new escape plan, which I assume is an evolutionary advantage, as it provides an alternative to depression, at least.

And so once again I come around to knowing: "Thou art that man." Even if it's a dead man, the equation holds up. Once in awhile I have to remember that the sense of separation between myself and others is a construct, and that's why there's a fear of its collapsing. Kissing the wounds is voluntarily collapsing the ego construction that thinks it is safe up there in heaven, where it cowers.


Posted: Mon - July 21, 2008 at 06:33 PM