Questioning the integrity of the body through the philosophical lens of Corinthians 12:14–26: An Appreciation
Nikolai Alexandrovich Yaroshenko - The Prisoner, 1878
The doctor stood in front of me like a god. He had the belly of Bachus but the height of Hercules and the dark, unrelenting eyes of some unforgiving fury.
He had come to my bedside Monday morning to discuss my discharge request. Standing beside my IV, I stared at him like a deer casting its brown eyes in the haunting glare of headlights, my ears hearing everything he muttered, not even nodding; no, only eyes wide open, only my astounded and nervous gaze.
He said I was in a precarious place. He said that surgery, the complete removal of my colon was my best option to survive all this. Otherwise, otherwise, at this point, as an alternative, I could consider changing my course of treatment, moving away from prednisone to another medication, cyclosporine — a drug I knew to be more devastating.
Either way, I figured listening, this would entail me staying another treacherous week in the hospital… or maybe two.
With the surgery, a piece of my body gone, a member of my intestinal tract thrown out —so, my body no longer whole. With the drug, this would mean potentially (potentially!) immediate hair loss and a weakened immune system but the inflammation would settle — that was the aim.
The aim.
To this I blinked, I guffawed and breaking my stare, I shook my head, my body’s first confident motion in the passing of those minutes.
No, I whispered. No. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and explained something to him: I hadn’t slept in weeks, in months and these last two weeks at McMaster University Hospital had been a hell on earth, an ordeal of anguish, of this sleeplessness, but also humiliation and the complete degradation of the my soul, psyche. This treatment I had so far received… I would argue had undermined the integrity of my human body. I had entered in shambles, I’d be leaving close to broken.
Thanks to him and his associate, Dr. Eriksson.
Perhaps I didn’t say all this but I wanted to and repeated my intention like a mantra: I am leaving. In the presence of this mountain of a man, a man who embodied both healthy and gluttony — that belly stands out in my mind - I stood my ground, wearied and broken but hopeful.
“That’s it, I’ll consider nothing else…. Sorry.” (These words book-ended by a typical Canadian apology.)
He blinked and said to me the most frightening words I have heard spoken in my life: “Okay, I’ll say - just so you know - a man like you in similar circumstances, a patient just like you Christijan left this hospital a month ago (and here he shrugged). We had offered him what I am offering you. Within two weeks of his discharge, sad to say, developed toxic megacolon — died at home.”
I nodded to this. Two weeks to live. That’s what he was basically saying… while my heart fluttered like a frightened bird in the cage of my chest.
…
Sometimes I don’t even know how I survived that moment. Especially now, I wonder, being hearty and healthy, sipping wine from my Viennese wine glass, listening to Saint-Säens , his Carnaval des Animaux on my CD player in Leipzig, Germany.
But I shuffle through the memory, play it out like a graphic scene in a horror film where I am both the participant and the viewer at once. My heart thumps in percussive confusion, my knees wilt like flowers left out too long in a vase on a window sill.
And near me, my King James Bible.
My father’s an atheist, a former Dutch Reformed. My mother’s parents were Russian Orthodox. In our family household we were neither. I am neither and somehow almost a Christian. I circle and skirt around conversion like an ice skater on a pond in early spring, hoping to avoid the thin ice, the place where it gives and cracks.
Christ for me was a grand figure of rebellion, an anarchist of compassion, a bandit, a Butch Cassidy of theological values, stealing the followers of crusty old belief systems. Unfortunately, his later followers, or rather those who came centuries after misinterpreted his message. They brandished swords and turned over empires, the original teachings turned upside down.
Yet I turn and return to Corinthians Chapter 12, verses 14–26. And though I know this passage is an intended metaphor for the body of Christ, the church, I interpret these words from the perspective of the body, of the human being in its integrity as a body… a body of mine I rescued some 15 years ago.
And seeing I was not raised a Christian, I first encountered these passages in a more typical way - via a television series.
In Deadwood when the Reverend Smith reminisces of the Civil War while offering a eulogy over the recently dead, he speaks of bloodshed and God’s plan. Accepting the unknown he cannot believe we are all not connected. The Reverend: “He says there should be no schism in the body but that all the members should have the same care, one to another.”
When I first turned to the passage myself and read it throughout, I nodded. I felt a frisson frequent and flow through my own body. At the beginning of my favourite part it reads: For the body is not one member, but many (Corinthians 12:14). For instance, I think now of my hands, these fingers of mine pressing down on the keys, my eyes blinking, my lips pursing in thought, my hand rubbing my forehead, and my feet tapping impatiently to find the next word.
And these lips, they purse further in thought when I read Corinthians 12:19 And if they were all one member, where were the body?
My forehead, this furrow… because this question is closest in complexity as well as beauty to the one presented by Pilate in his ‘what is truth?’ (John 18:38)
What is the body? Yes… but before we arrive there, here we must note the subjunctive of the above quote: where were the body?
Here it is ‘were’ (in other translations ‘where would the body be?).
Yet, though this is a feature of a more poetic and literary English, it makes me question why we don’t think of the body as a plurality (Corinthians 12:14) considering it is treated as such in our modern culture. In the eyes of the medical profession, the body boasts many members.
For we treat a stuffed nose, a sore back, a stomach ache singularly. We don’t come to the doctors’ with a ‘sick body’ but a sickness specific to one aspect or rather here, one member of our body.
So why don’t we say the body are… Why?
In other circumstances, if we consider in English that a ‘couple’ is a unit and duality at the same time, why don’t we apply the same to the body? With the word ‘couple’ we are presented with options, either: ‘the couple is’, or ‘the couple are.’
The same grammatical approach applies to a ‘team’. ‘The team is playing well.’ ‘The team are playing well.’
But the body is… it is.
Our grammar states an answer, a truth. What is the body? The body is a unit.
I felt this even back in 2003. At that time I longed to heal, to be whole. I thought then my colon could only belong to me the way my eyes, my feet, as much as my ears, my nose… my jaw, my forehead, my legs all belonged to me. To have it removed from the whole seemed impossible, absurd, to create imbalance, a vacuum. In the back of my mind, this was a learning opportunity but one that came with a time limit. For whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honored, all the members rejoice with it. (Corinthians 12:26)
…
Discharging myself in March 2003, turning my back on doctors, I risked everything for the unity of my body; an entire life could have been snuffed out for the sake of saving one integral member of my being.
And today I am grateful that I possessed a stubborn hope that didn’t fall for the desperate folly of the doctor’s dreaded warning. I am grateful but I was also determined to meet others who might help me on my quest, teaching me about healing and overcoming.
I did encounter them.
And today, I feel blessed. I maintain a healthy weight. I eat what I eat, what my body wants. I drink beer, I drink wine. There is no repressive dietary regime, no panoply of prescription drugs at my bed side nor do I take supplements (probiotics, now and then). In others words, I have taken control of my body by healing the whole.
I am grateful for this, this all the while knowing others having not fared so well.
Countless times I have encountered blogs featuring selfies of irritable bowel sufferers posing with their colostomy bags. I see women in bikinis brandishing their stomas, these brown pads placed against their exposed abdomens.
They are considered brave and yes, it is statement to be unembarrassed by the shameful and hidden and less than honorable aspects of our daily lives, namely our digestion (and those members of the body, which we think to be less honourable, upon these we bestow more abundant honour…Corinthians 12:23).
As a culture we treat our digestive organs irreverently. We associate them with shame, embarrassment. In films, farting and pooping, yes, is funny. It is the bane of banal comedy though I think this comedy stems from a misunderstanding of the body. Children laugh red-faced at the discussion of sex but mostly get over it reaching adulthood. Contrariwise, we still laugh like children at the hidden inner workings of our gut and the giggling never ends.
We haven’t got over it. Maybe it indicates how willing we are to forsake the serious and be irreverent. We need humor, I understand. I am all for it.
Still, a schism lies in our perception of what is worth revering and what isn’t.
I don’t intend here to demean those who underwent surgery to save their lives. I understand that beyond the sexy selfies there is a dark and painful side to the stoma that is rarely spoken of, a hidden harsh truth. There is discomfort of having a part missing in the body and doing one’s best to adjust.
No, instead I mourn that our culture has yet to understand the full and undeniable unifying integrity of our body. I mourn that these people sacrificed a piece of themselves, a piece of the whole without healing or finding some sense of the why of it all. The body is not a series of parts working together but a wholeness reflecting our psyche and self as much as our soul.
The body is…
The body is in connection with ourselves as a unity.
We possess such depths but our medical options are limited by the expertise of our physicians who study the body as parts that can be removed thus destroying the ‘whole.’ They study the body as an ‘are’ and many continue to suffer for it.
Me, today… enjoying a beer in Polish restaurant in Leipzig