Looking Through The Glass

A number of years ago, my work place hired a school bus that transported the entire medical office staff to the Body Worlds exhibit at OMSI. All those donated human bodies displayed for observers to marvel at, to discover different parts of ourselves that remain hidden to the human eye. All those tendons, bones, ligaments, organs and veins painstakingly preserved by Plastination. We are fragile humans, prone to sickness, worry, addictions, obsessions and right hard living. Now there is a current exhibit in Germany, devoted to the Anatomy of Happiness, aiming to show us the amazing effects happiness has on our bodies.

I sometimes think about that day at OMSI, much like jotting down a note on a slip of paper, tucking it in a desk drawer, finding it months later, joyfully, mainly because you don't want to forget what you hoped to remember in the first place. I think about the flesh that covers our bodies, how our choices either help or hurt our bodies. And the ribbons of red under all that skin, this life-pumping vital part of us? No matter what your lifestyle, habits, illnesses, or massive doses of daily happiness are, the living truth is the same for all of us. We all bleed the same color.

So when I flip on the radio in the car, on this wet and soggy November morning, desperately searching for a break from the pounding news, guns, unfathomable hate, Twitter and ridiculous division, I hear it for the first time. Immediately, like flowing water through a quiet forest, this rejuvenated spring of hope began to spread its colors, softening the anxiety, riddling the veins with a fragile memory.

Hope is the arrow that pierces the darkness.

The song plays on repeat at home, reminding me all over again of what I never saw that day at OMSI. Through the pristine glass, looking at the bodies on display, I stood in awe of how marvelously, intricately, the human body is created. Nowhere could I see the color of their skin.

This is my command: Love each other

John 15:17