I’m reading Philip Ball’s The Devil’s Doctor: Paracelsus and the World of Renaissance Magic and Science, and I came across some interesting stories about excrement that seemed appropriate for this time of year.
The young Martin Luther entered an ascetic brotherhood of the Augustinian monks after being caught in a hellish lightening storm. With the wind howling and cracking the trees apart and thunderbolts and demons screaming in his impressionable ears, Martin cried out to St. Anne (a good solid choice as she was the patron saint of his father’s profession, the miners):
Oh dear and good St. Anne! I know you protect the miners in their times of need. If you will save me now from whence these bolts of lightening comething, I promise from this point forward I will devote my life to God’s work, here and forever and ever, amen!
Ok, I sort of made that quote up, but it was probably something like that. And so, having made it home safely after the storm, and being really quite good at keeping oaths (unlike most of us who have also, at some point or another, usually under the age of 21, sworn utter devotion to God, often under duress of being pulled over by the police and having an illegal substance under the seat [just a beer, for heaven's sake!] or maybe driving our mom’s car across a large, deep puddle off-roading with some really cool friends, or even being chased after toilet papering somebody’s house…of course these are just examples of times when somebody MIGHT have sworn utter devotion to God, hypothetically) young Martin Luther chucked his interest in law school and joined the Catholics, placing himself at the mercy of a rage filled and terrifying God. Whew.
Martin Luther was truly devoted and therefore found himself in a perpetual state of terror. He felt unworthy of God, depressed, anxious, and psychotic. He himself stated that he would have died from the work of vigil, prayer, and reading, and that he “hated this just God who punished sinners” except for the fact that one day, when he was reading his bible (Psalm 22), God was revealed to him as as the Lord of Compassion who sacrificed his son not out of anger or retribution, but to reconcile himself to an imperfect world. After that Luther “felt [him]self to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into Paradise.”
Perhaps you are wondering, what does this have to do with excrement? Well here’s the answer: Martin Luther was constipated, both with spirituality and with poop. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3944549.stm). He suffered terrible, painful bouts and spent hours on his stone throne working it out. Now perhaps you are wondering what does that have to do with this time of year? Wait for it…
In my last blog about the humors, I linked the four elements with the four seasons. The four seasons can also be linked up with the four stages of life: birth, young, old, dead. (Ok, if you want it a little more politically correct, the Hindus thought of the four life stages as student, house holder, retired person, and ascetic. I agree that thinking of myself as an ascetic sounds nicer than as a dead person, but then again, I’m a hedonist at heart, so I might just rather be dead. We’ll see.)
Right now we (at least in the Pacific Northwest) are poised with one foot in death, and one foot in birth. It’s one of the greatest times for letting go, releasing the impure, distilling the useful elements from the toxic elements. It is said that Reformation was born just after Martin Luther was able to clear out his mind and bowels to make room for new ideas. Just Jen says it well:
According to his own report, everything changed for Luther during his “Tower Experience” immediately following his “daily task”. After elimination, Luther claims that he reached the pivotal turning point for his philosophy–which is to say he discoverd what he thought of as the correct interpretation of Righteousness and Justice in scripture: a point he thinks the church fathers got wrong, or communicated imperfectly. This understanding meant one important thing: that we are justified by faith, and faith alone. (http://piercework.typepad.com/just_jen/2009/03/martin-luthers-bowels.html)
It’s time to take some deep, cleansing breaths and, as my beautiful partner said so eloquently yesterday afternoon in the Subaru, begin to make a habit of consciously letting go. Tis’ the season.
