Return to the Holy Temple

The body breaks my modern mind⎯
so used to soaring through stories, abstractly
forgetful of this flesh, this anchor⎯
it weakens, and hails down to holy earth,
    
    What some would name, a soul.

    What I will name, my soul.

My brittle bones belch,
"Return! Return! Re-
    turn from weary wanderings
    Now! Fill this sacred sense-bag
    of twitching nerve and aching meat.

"Prepare a place
    for empathy to root
    and bloom. Sorely needed now
    in a world awoken, unhappily
    from dreams of immortality."

A Quest for Wellness

Bodies have warranties that end around thirty-five.

Or so it seems to me. This year has been especially difficult for me. Unexplained chronic abdominal pain has haunted me all Summer. Yet, it could’ve been happening much longer, but it wasn’t constant.

I have been in and out of tests including a colonoscopy since the end of July. Nothing has been determined yet.

I do have celiac disease, but my current problems aren’t matched to it.

Early this morning I had a HIDA Scan to monitor gallbladder function. I am hopeful this could give some explanation for my struggles. Chronic pain is exhausting.

I don’t have any big truth lessons to share today, nor spiritual witticisms. It’s hard to be sick and unable to do things you once enjoyed. I never imagined myself as someone who is chronically unhealthy, but here I am.

In the midst of the bodily pain, it helps to keep my mind on things that fill me with joy. Little moments reading with my son, or how my wife glows when she is almost done with a good book. The life inside my body and mind is not in a healthy place, but the life outside is full of beauty and wonder. If I can keep returning to mindfulness of these tiny miracles, like breathing, I can, for a moment, forget my suffering.