Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Christopher Reeve & the Random Assignment of the Human Body

Each of the nine months that preceded the births of my three sons was a prayer vigil.  The joy of learning a child's been planted was met by the anxiety of probability.  Each ultrasound carried a pause similar to one that introduces a life altering jury verdict. 
Will he have ten toes and ten fingers?  
Are his arms and legs forming? 
 Can he see, and hear?  
Will his brain accomplish each delicate partition necessary to understand himself, and the world?

What seemed like a natural, considered act (making a baby),  had become an exercise in random occurrence, and luck.  Any control I thought I had over the design of my child was repealed.  The construction of his parts, and appearance, was subject to another architect's blueprint.  He would have to accept, or adapt, to the proportions he's given.  That was an enormous awakening for me. The chance I took with each of them, and the physical form of their creation, would be their burden to carry, alone.   I've never reconciled my desire to have a child, with the blind draw I agreed to when creating one.


The Human Body is a beautiful instrument.  It can convey emotion into movement.  It can become a symbol of perfection, and discipline.  It can become a vehicle that explores the depth, and potential, of mind.  It can become a mythology all on its own.  It can become the medium that transforms life from the observational, to the experiential.  


Or it can create obstacles to all of them.  

The boys playing freshman football get to play it on accident.  They get to play it because all their feathers unfurled as diagramed.  When you've been able to run and jump and throw and swim and catch since you learned to walk, it's easy to take your body for granted.  It's easy to feel entitled to your prowess, and accomplishments.  It's easy to feel satisfied with what you can already do, since what you already do is more than many others will ever be able to.

Or, you can view your ability as a Liaison between those with status, and those denied status.
And help them gain their own.

You were in the right aisle when athleticism was passed out.
You got stuck in traffic, and missed your flight, then read about your plane crashing.
You got accepted to college because your Dad was an alum, and missed the Vietnam War.

Like anyone who's been spared when others are taken, 
you're required to REFLECT.  

You need to ask yourself if you matter more than anyone else,
or if you've been entrusted to take care of those less capable.

You need to ask if anyone who put on a red cape, and blue tights, could become Superman.  Or if that boy from Krypton was chosen.


We use our bodies to merge with our surroundings.  If we have a fine-tuned body our surroundings feel like a playground, and we feel as if we belong.  If we have a body that gets in the way, that's deformed in some way, our surroundings feel less hospitable.   No one 'deserves' one, or the other.  We get what we get, and come to our own conclusions about 'why'.  

We celebrate the accidental bodies that surpass the limits of others.  We put the people who wear them on T.V., and in books, so they can tell us how to do something even they
aren't quite certain they can explain.  And we allocate one day per year for a 'Special' Olympics, or a few weeks for a Challenger softball season.  

We miss the real accomplishment, the real olympics. 
  •  We never vacate the podium so we can hear about the courage summoned to enter the world, day after day, when you weren't constructed to fit in it.  
  • We never ask about the isolation one feels when they're excluded from activities that compose a normal day.  
  • We never ask if the 'different' ones have a better definition of Heroism than we do, a heroism that's engaged on a daily basis to navigate the stares, and pointed fingers, of strangers.  A heroism that poses the same unanswered question to the Creator: "Why am I the one who has to be different?  Why me?"
  • We never ask the accidental body how he justifies a  $20 million shoe deal for shoes he never wore, or how catching a ball makes anyone a hero. 


Christopher Reeve's accidental body, the one his soul got packaged in, was the living likeness of a cartoon Superhero.  He honed his craft of acting just like anyone, but his big break came because he resembled an icon.  Playing the part of Superman brought him fame, and fortune. He bought a private plane, and nice homes.  He bought a horse, and became an equestrian.  He was elevated from the masses.  And then he fell.  He fell off the horse that his accidental body provided him with, and broke his neck.  His accidental body was paralyzed.  Superman was a  quadriplegic.

That's when Christopher Reeve actually became Superman.  He pretended to be The Man of Steel with his accidental body.  He became the man of steel when he accepted his tragic loss with grace, and looked within.  He discovered that the body he'd worn was irrelevant.  He told us that his accidental body had actually distracted him from who he was.  Now that it had become a shell, he understood that's all it ever had been.  He expressed genuine joy with his circumstance.  And he experienced real love when he told his wife it was alright for her to leave, and she didn't.  It hadn't been about the body after all.
Even if most of us still believe it is.

Maybe our accidental bodies are assigned to help gain access to the world, and our place in it.  Maybe our accidental bodies aren't accidental, at all.  Maybe they're the perfect vessel for the spirit we're meant to become, and leave behind.

Every physical record will fall.
Every physical 'limit' will be broken.  
Every accidental body will grow old, and die.

So, what about you will remain?
 What's within you that you'll gift back to the world?
And how will it be known when all physical traces are gone?


Real Life Examples of Accidental Bodies bowing out for What's
Truly Deserving of Reverence:











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