Incarnare

I do not read Latin but as an English teacher, I do occasionally have to search the etymology of words. One that is theologically bandied about this season is the word “incarnate,” a revered word in the telling of the biblical Christmas story. As such, it is clean and unobtrusive, told on stage by newly washed young ‘uns who might be getting up the stage for the first time, anxiously self-conscious even if they only have to play shepherds watching their sheep in the field at night!

“Embodied in human form” is the formula from the “Word becomes flesh” in the logos song of the Gospel of John. Lest we hightail it on the “form” as simply that of an empty shell, let us get down a notch more corporeal. Think carne, the red meat dripping in blood, flesh on sinews, cartilages, and bones on the cutting edge of the knife at Sabalu. The Roman Church insists the Eucharistic meal’s elements turn into the actual body and blood of Jesus on consecration, leaving disciples open to the charge of fanged carnivores, as they were once accused before old Constantine took them as allies by the Byzantium portals.
Tomas de Aquino’s metaphor was summum bonum before we split theology from the science lab, relegating the former to the realm of metaphysics beyond grubby hands but understood in the niceties of our souls. In the colorful language of Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov, that’s nyet; don’t mean nothin’ across the Urals anymore. Incarnate, in any contemporary sense, is meat–woof, wart, woe and wail–all of it!

What makes incarnare critical in the ancient faith of this season’s babe in the manger is its distance from the dejado posture of the garden of Eden, a result of Augustine’s guilt of enjoying too much the pleasures of the flesh, generalizing the confessional “sin” as the common condition of every creature bar none save the incarnate Jesus of the Christmas story. Flesh devoid of meat was made mystical, transcendent to the babe with reality on everyone else universally grounded on the slippery slope of low morals and epidermal perfidy.

In 2014, it is the meat, the flesh as it came with all its glory and wonder through a lengthy planetary evolution imprinted in the DNA of our humanity. Ah, that is still too metaphorical for comfort. OK. Let’s look at what came out of Mama’s womb. Already, we are skipping the intricate incidence of fetus conception, a 9-month journey of one hell of a miracle, if one may be allowed that metaphor.

Let’s take the body that made us conscious when we noticed our ability to expel “pee” and produce “poo.” After childbirth, the brain developed to connect nodes that shaped all of life’s experiences. Critical were the first three years when the neurons received visual, auditory, and gustatory stimuli that divided cells, with the signals sent by a complex electrochemical process through synapses.

Anyone who has taken biology and tried to get the mind around cells and the cell division process called mitosis where 50,000 cells are replaced every second is confronted by the immense complexity of just the act of breathing. Jump to body systems and functions acting in harmony in a surprisingly efficient manner and it renders the most sophisticated android to the level of an exhaust pipe to a well-functioning vehicular engine, a byte in the giga-wondrous world of wonder!

We currently name 10 of these systems that enables us to live. We shan’t define them, though most will recognize them in their own bodies. They are the urinary, circulatory, respiratory, and digestive systems that process sustaining air, water, and solids; then there are the muscular and the skeletal systems where all hang out, defended by the lymphatic system while hormones of the endocrine system scurries messages about, with the traffic managed in the primary central organ called the brain of the nervous system whose byways include the spinal cord and an extensive peripheral network. The reproductive system replicates the whole evolutionary shebang.

When I first dined with my host family, the housemother apologized for not having enough food of the 15-course meal on the table. After assuring her that there was enough, she apologized for not being a good cook, so some were either under-or-over done. She was trained to make excuses for “what is” as never sufficient; the element of achievement needed define identity and assures the relevance of vocation.

I say, we already won on the word “go”. TAGA Sports has an article of a Saipan team shunning the culture of winning. Way to play, folks!

Incarnate is the affirmation that one’s birth, just showing up, is enough not only without apologies but in celebration of the emotive and the cognitive, of spirit and psyche; most importantly, it begins at the level of the meat. Before it comes to “unto thy hands I commend my spirit” comes incarnare, “my body given, my blood poured out, for thee.”

At the Christmas table, reverently pause when you ask: “Pass the meat, please.”