Resiliency

Etching by CJ McGannon

Our beings, on the long life trek we make in this existence, are models of a tremendous resiliency.  The ability to sustain and survive the small and large nicks and breaks to our hearts, bodies, psychs, souls and minds endured over a lifetime is just short of miraculous.  A broken heart, a catastrophic accident, traumatic events, repeated loss, soul numbing extended misery circumstances-- how is it we don't die a million times over with the suffering and pain this life provides us on almost a continual basis?

Resiliency.  The body alone is a wonderful example of responsive rebound.  The body's design, from its replicating cells to its innate protection properties irrepressibly urges:  "Live!"  Vital organs are protected by bony prominences.  The ever mobile joints are useful and guarded by their artistically layered ligaments, tendons and fascia and well oiled by the buoyant, slippery synovial fluid.  Who could imagine twenty eight feet of intestine would be useful crammed into half of the torso's relatively small cavity?  And yet it is useful; brilliantly.  Incredible. And the tremendous cooperative symphony this complex organism creates between the parts, harmonizing the whole, whether it be useful bacteria in the mouth/saliva jump-starting the digestion process (actually initiated in the use of the eyes, nose and brain) or the pumping action of the heart in concert with respiration.  When something goes awry in one aspect of the body's function, there is a usually graceful accepting of the workload by another aspect. The spleen, liver, pancreas and kidneys all function in some capacity to filter toxins from the blood.  If the spleen is removed the pancreas and liver pick up on the function of the missing spleen's work.  Sometimes it is seamless, sometimes it is a dysfunctional undertaking.  But the body is a community and in relationship to its parts.  And most of all, because of this relationship, it is tremendously resilient.

The Three Shades, Rodin*

Similarly, the psych has a host of coping mechanisms to buffer the suffering experienced through our timeline.  It's actually quite remarkable, even elegant.  The strain of the brain and ego to return to a semblance of  "normalcy" in a crisis, has useful initial functions like denial, projection, isolation or rebound reactions to put into play when necessary, when the pain is too great, in order to survive.  This is how we carry on.  This is irrepressible life force trying to find a way to survive.

Even though we are programmed from the get go to move toward death, dying can be a difficult business; the collective body doesn't want to do it, even when it is unbearably tired of the struggle.  We have this incredible resiliency, life force that streams through us resisting capitulation with a universal energy. Our being is made to struggle, overcome, or at least to die trying.  And even in the process of the inevitable surrender of the body to the dying process, quite often resiliency is seen as the Spirit takes over this urge to live and adapts.  Again, one area in the community of the self fails, lets go; another part picks up the "life" action and becomes resilient, and rebounds.  Amazing.  This sophisticated organism we inhabit is a finely tuned orchestra; layered, complex and multifaceted, even when it is at its most dilapidated. From this point of view, it's hard to imagine that the spirit doesn't transcend the body post mortem.

Honoring this meta collective aspect of the divine in us seems mandatory. 

* " These identical male figures--known as shades, or ghosts from the underworld--are closely related to Rodin's figure of Adam.  However, rather than awakening to life as Adam does, the Shades embody death, sleep, and a loss of consciousness."  (description of statuary at Rodin Museum, Philadelphia)