Heads Up! A Meditation on Blunt-Force Trauma

Ther was no dore that he nolde heve of harre,
Or breke it at a rennyng with his heed.

- Prologue to The Canterbury Tales, lines 552-553

Well, Chaucer’s miller may have been able to butt down doors but my own talents in that direction are much more modest. I woke up today to say the morning office before heading to the gym. The house was cold so I went into the laundry room to retrieve my watch cap. The night before, we had hung up some clohtes to dry on the door frame - you know, the kind of knit stuff that you can’t put in the dryer. (Or at least, you can, but only if you want to end up with doll clothes.) Anyway, in the act of ducking under the haberdashery I whammed my noggin against the jam. I split it nicely down the middle - my head, not the door - which resulted in a fun trip to the ER. They glued it shut (Becky asked if they could do my mouth while they were at it) and now I have this lovely Frankenstein slash about two inches long between hairline and eyebrows. In the vast expanse of forehead I sport it stands out like a neon beer sign in a convent. All of this besides the whacking headache.

The worst of it, of course, it that now I have to tell that bland and embarrassing story to everybody I see for the next week or so. Makes me feel like such a klutz. The ER nurse commented that I have the blood pressure and pulse of an athlete, but it was hard to preen myself much over that point given the circumstances. Unlike Henry V’s yeoman soldiery I cannot strip my sleeve and show my scars/And say “These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.” It occurs to me that I could always engage in a little revisionist history, perhaps tell people that Jack Swagger caught me with a folding chair during our cage match on RAW? Or maybe mutter something under my breath about the modern world being no place for unicorns?

So it’s not the injury; it’s the embarrassment. Doubtless had I been St. John (Revelation 4.1) I would have stumbled at the threshold of glory and bled all over the twenty four elders. When, at the end of the play, the Lord finally appears in his blood-boltered BDU’s I’d blush to think that at least some of the stains came when he had to mop up my gushing noggin (Revelation 19.13). And perhaps that’s just the point. Spiritually or physically, I am willing to suffer but not to look silly, to be injured but not to be inept. And yet maybe a good deal of living in the Kingdom of Heaven means getting comfortable with just that concept. There is a set of scars in that heavenly throne room that reflects intention instead of inattention, sacrifice instead of sloppiness, heroics instead of moronics (Revelation 5.6). As for the rest of us, probably even the martyrs beneath the altar cuddling up in the white-robed warmth of anticipated vengeance, we mostly bear the whips and scorns of our own outrageous stupidity. We’ve slammed our stubborn heads against the solid doorposts of holiness; we’ve pitted our sinful flesh against God’s righteous law and learned - multiple times, but each one as if it were a fresh discovery - that it is our flesh that gives. We can violate God’s laws but we can’t ultimately break them.

And perhaps, in the end, that’s what we have to offer - the goofy evidence of our felix culpa, the sinful stumbling that provides an opportunity for our Lord to show how much he loves us. Melville’s Captain Ahab hated his peg-leg (and the whale who made it necessary) because it reminded him of his mortality. “Here I am,” he puffs while getting fitted for a new limb, “proud as a Greek god, and yet standing debtor to this blockhead for a bone to stand on!” Injury creates humanity, and, even worse, community, and Ahab’s self-concept can’t stand it. In the end it kills him and virtually everyone around him.

So here, Lord, I offer you my busted head as a tribute to your greatness. I also offer you - a two-for-one bargain suitable to the season we’ve transmogrified from your Son’s birth - all the brickbats of witticism I’ll have cracked across my already-cracked dome. (”You must’ve made Becky really mad!” “It wouldn’t be so bad if you had some hair to cover it!” You know the sort of thing, Father.) Like David doing the dance of the seven skivvies before the Ark of the Covenant, I will be yet more undignified in your worship. It isn’t much, I grant you, but it’s what I have.

However: I have a free copy of my book, The Fountain, for whoever comes up with the best alternative version of how I got this zipper up the middle of my face. The decision of the judge is final.

This entry was posted on December 18, 2009 at 12:30 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.