Milagritos

Every time I'm in pain, I think about ashes.  I moved funny yesterday--twisted something, or leaned too much to one side.  So every couple of minutes a spasm of pain grips me.  It will go away in time, I think.  These things usually do.  For now, this is a "Just be" day.  So said the voice I know as the maternal God within me.  No expectations.  No need to accomplish anything.  Just breathe.  Yell when the pain hits.  Curse God, the world, and your body when you need to.  Surely this permission is grace. (Years ago, I was hospitalized for a procedure which caused excruciating pain.  My sister, who at the time was an agnostic, leaned over my bed and whispered, "Say anything to God that you need to." It remains the single best moment of "pastoral care" I have ever experienced.)  I'm surprised I'm writing, since it usually qualifies as an accomplishment when I do.  But this came unbidden, in the midst of a spasm.  I've learned to pay attention to such visitations, though they don't usually come with physical pain.  If anything, pain blocks them.  Perhaps this is a "milagrito."  Today, a package arrived in the mail.  From my sister, the pastoral care whisperer mentioned above--Two charms and a bright orange box with a flower painted on it. She bought them in Mexico.  "These are 'milagritos', " she wrote on a card.  Little miracles. I'm suppose to put them around an altar. I don't have an altar, but perhaps grace means I don't need one.  I got a milagrito anyway.  I'm writing while I'm in pain.

Physical pain brings me down to basics.  All my lofty thoughts and promises, complicated theologies, vanish.  I am plunged to my animal nature; connected to what I have in common with the rest of the created world--with plants and animals, insects and trees.  It's not a bad thing--to be reminded, once in a while.  We all seek relief from pain, and a part of us anyway will one day be ashes.

When I asked my Bible study group what they wanted to talk about this week, they quoted the verse, "From dust you came.  To dust you shall return." I don't want to remember that my body will be ashes.  I don't want to think about the fact that I will die.  I've thought of that more than enough since my mother died. But to be brought down low is not a bad thing.  To feel my companionship with animals and trees.  To think of them as friends; to imagine that they empathize, to feel a pull to empathize more with them. . .How would that change the way I live?  What gift would that bring to my world?  It might at least make me feel less alone in pain.  Small as that seems, it would be a gift.  It might even be a milagrito, a gift of grace.