Mystic Wisdom

Yesterday the group took a day-trip to Siena and I saw St. Catherine's head and one of her fingers.  When I stood in front of the relics, a few things struck me: the limited nature of my pilgrimage, the dismemberment of the sacred, and the hunger of (and for) mystics.

First, there was my journey. I suppose I could technically declare Virginia the origin, or maybe even in Seattle if I wanted to add a few thousand miles, but really my trip to Siena consisted of the hour and a quarter bus-ride from Firenze and perhaps a quarter-mile walk from the bus-stop to San Domenico.  Siena's walls, while still imposing, did nothing to prohibit me from entering into the city. We met our tour guide immediately outside San Domenico and wandered right in. Some of my classmates continued their conversations.  There were no other groups inside. We walked immediately to the relics. "Why is her head so little?," "Is that her real skin?," "Can we go closer?," and "Which finger is that?," my classmates asked. [Answers: people were smaller in the middle ages; no, it's wax; no, and it used to be in that other reliquary and you're closer than that; ?] Meanwhile, I mentally retreated to a basement classroom in the Fine Arts building at Seattle U.  During our medieval art history course we read about pilgrimages and studied relics and reliquaries.  Pilgrimages were physically exhausting. The length of the journey perhaps increases one's appreciation of these holy objects. This felt too easy to just prance in and "take in the holiness" for a few brief moments.  

As for the dismemberment of the sacred, the relics of St. Caterina are the literal proof-in-point. Her body was torn apart in a political compromise.  Because of her important work to bring the papacy back to Rome, the Vatican wanted to keep her remains, but Siena contended she should be in the place of her birth, where she saw her visions, where she received the stigmata. So, chop chop! Crude, yes. But as a participant, as one who has now viewed the relics of St. Catherine in Siena, I see how important relics are to a city, both in spiritual identity, and for political and economic reasons. They are part of the draw of the city--what drew pilgrims and now pulls tourists. Yet, when I stood there, I wasn't so much horrified that St. Catherine's was decapitated or dis-digit-ed, but the way we just passed through, like we were window shopping. How classmates stood in the expansive basilica complaining they couldn't use their cameras inside.  Behind a thick layer of glass, are the objects safe from this treatment? Can they handle the pokes and prods of tourists? How hallowed is Catherine's hollowed head? 

When she died, Catherine was described as skeletal. She had not eaten anything but the daily bread, a small host, and some water for the last seven years of her life.  While I was not particularly hungry yesterday, nor am I today as I am fighting off a bit of a cold, I know that even when I get a little bit hungry, my stomach interrupts my brain and requests some attention. Fasting is supposed to make you hungry for something else besides food. As for the hunger "for" mystics, I have decided this is too much for right now, but I will have something to say at some point which has something to do with this urge being imposed on false idols. 

To be in a heightened spiritual/mental state I think you must be in a somewhat uncomfortable  physical state (hunger, tiredness, extreme temperature, bodily pain or injury). This is not a new concept or insight, but it's relevant to this trip.  This is not to say that tourists, like myself and my classmates yesterday, will get more out of a visit to a Cathedral or other holy site if they are hungry. In fact, the opposite is probably true--the growls of the stomach and the mouth will probably detract from the experience.  I suppose what I am trying to get at is the idea that if I am annoyed with my classmates, or annoyed with my runny nose, these are just distractions from the experience, but there is some un-comfortable physical state that produces a feeling of mental or spiritual insatiability.  I wonder how often, if ever, in these touristy situations a particularly fitting mood arises, where one can feel properly open and receptive. Could I actively pursue this mood or should I be grateful if just once it comes to me?

This is not to say I didn't enjoy my visit to Siena.  As it is so close, perhaps I will return in the next few months, in a smaller group and undoubtedly in a different mood.  My favorite part of the day was when during our free time to explore I went back to the Duomo. I observed the facade (and other visitors) for at least half an hour and then went and stood in the unfinished portion of the Duomo, the outlining walls of a massive expansion, only imagined never completed. I have no way of knowing what the imagined interior space would have become, but instead, I stood there, my own imagination swelling in the openness, in the unfinishedness of the place. It reminds me a bit of how I feel when I look at the two-toned stone of the Washington monument.  What some see has an aesthetic failure I appreciate as our greatest testament to slavery, to civil war, and the preservation of the union.  What I felt there under the roofless, would-be cathedral was a real sense of spirit--of human ambition to create something beautiful and majestic. To imagine something so grand you know it can never be completed in your lifetime, but you still start to build up the first walls, hoping others will absorb your passion and continue your work, the work of realizing the imagined, or in my case, imagining the imagined.