This blog was first published on February 8, 2017
This picture was taken inside, looking out, the second sanctuary built at Gran Quivira, New Mexico.
Salinas Pueblos National Monument is a little off the beaten path, but in our summer wanderings through the Southwest, we found it worth the trip. This monument, located around Mountainair, New Mexico, is a combination of three separate ruins left by the early Spanish conquest of the area. Although driving between all the sites will take a couple of hours, you can walk through the remains of ancient Christian sanctuaries at each of the areas: Gran Quivira, Quarai, and Abo. Close by you can also witness the pueblo ruins of indigenous people of the area. For a time, these two cultures inhabited the same land and interacted with each other. Exploring the power dynamics of this relationship might prove fruitful, but it will have to wait for another day. Instead, I am thinking today of ruins and broken bodies.
Perhaps this is because I began this reflection over two months ago as I was preparing for a regularly scheduled colonoscopy [note: everything is fine]. There is an awkwardness surrounding colonoscopies. Anything involving tests, procedures, probing, examination, and exposing the southern half of our bodies tends to head in that direction. There is an undeniable vulnerability that I've experienced since my colitis diagnosis fifteen years or so ago. Whether it is the occasional flare-up, periodic examination, blood work, or regularly scheduled colonoscopy, I find myself torn between a sense of gratitude for the medical attention/treatment that I have received and a sense of betrayal from my body. I have learned that I can't deny the fact that I am a broken creation. With that brokenness comes frustration, loneliness, borderline despair, and occasional resignation to the powers and principalities beyond my control.
In this place, I find myself connected to others who are hurting. Let me be clear; I don't pretend to understand the fullness of the broken body struggles of others. My colitis has taught me better than to be that presumptuous. Unless you have traveled down the road of particular acute and chronic conditions, you can't know the actual nature of that unique journey. Each of our struggles has a component that is unique and known only to us. This reality contributes a loneliness to the pain as even our closest family members can't know the fullness of what we are experiencing.
There is, however, some things that we can say about brokenness that is universal. Broken body living involves vulnerability and a sense of powerlessness. We hurt in mind and spirit when our bodies no longer work the way that used to ought to function. Depression, loneliness, and despair might take up new or expanded residences within our being. Walking through the ruins of Salinas Pueblos Missions, you see only the piles of stones that constitute the remnants of walls. Roof-less these ruins are open to the elements and to further erosion. Gone also are the festive decorations that hung in sacred spaces and domestic dwellings. The ruins at Salinas bear witness to a sad truth: once we lose something, it is gone and not returning. The pueblos and missions that once were present in the Salinas area are now gone to history. Even if the National Park Service were to reconstruct the buildings - the community that lived and prayed in that space would be no more. Broken body living is ultimately left to grieve what has been lost. In that place, we mourn and yearn for something new to emerge.
Inspired by faith, let us turn to the yearning piece. Walking among the ruins in New Mexico, I saw the evidence of where a community once gathered to interact with each other and with God. In these ancient and now vacant spaces, broken bodies came together and shared life. Only weeds and wind occupy the places where there were once conversations, personalities, troubles, and dreams. The outer shells of these buildings now open to the sky. And the sky remains untouched by the ages.
On the day of our stroll, the heavens were filled with promise. A cerulean blue canopy, with wispy clouds, covered us. My eucharistic imagination got the best of me. We are not alone. There is a presence that is as real as the things that we build with stones and mortar. This real presence is available to broken bodies and dreams. It lives among the weeds and is carried by the wind. "Come," it beckons all who are hurting and weary. "Come, live in me!"
It is the same invitation that we share when we break bread, and we share in the cup. Christ's body is given and received in the midst of broken lives. In a ruined state of crumbled stones, Christian community enters into the mystery of Christ's resurrected body. Entering this mystery, we find that our buildings or our carefully constructed doctrines cannot contain Christ's resurrected body. It is a process that is ongoing, a journey without out end. Along the way, however, we discover glimpses of the peace that passes all understanding touches the depths of our souls and has the audacity to heal our lives broken. Along the way, something happens that is better than the reconstruction of the rubble - resurrection of our whole lives to new life. That is our hope that opens to the sky, to the cup, to the mystery of it all.
Thanks for reading this blog. Feel free to leave comments or "like it" below. It would also be appreciated if you were to share it with friends on Facebook. Thank you for helping me to share my writing with others. In the Resurrected Body of Christ, Walt