This is the Blood of Life...

Fall is approaching... you can smell it in the air... a certain sharp expectancy floats down with the turning leaves... the certain knowledge that death and dormancy are in the wings... waiting...
On the farm of my childhood, fall was the time for butchering the hog. The weather was cool and crisp, the meat would not spoil and the smokehouse could do its work without adding to the burden of the summer heat. The neighbor men would gather to help... the hog would be shot, bled and strung up by its heels to be gutted, skinned and butchered. Nothing was wasted. The skin was fried to make snacks, the fat was rendered to be used in cooking and soap making, the head was used to make head cheese, the hooves, the intestines, everything but the squeal as my granddaddy used to say, was used. At the end of the day, hams hung in the smokehouse along with the other parts of the pig to be preserved for wintertime meals. And our family enjoyed the luxury of fresh, hormone free, raised by us, meat. No room for Disney animals on the farm... all the animals, including us, had our jobs to do and we did them. In my grandparents day, survival depended upon everyone doing their part.
In my liberal church, we are fond of debating blood issues... the cross... did God really send His Son to die for us... some of us are still mired in our reactions to our fundamentalist upbringings ... some of us have had the luxury of living with intellectual choices that can be made without life altering consequences... not like my grandparents. They would be mystified by the uproar over blood. They knew their life depended upon blood being shed. Without the hog and steer dying, they would have had no food for their families. It was the responsible behavior....not easy.... you killed an animal you knew, had raised, often petted.... necessary but not easy. In our time, we buy sanitized meat... raised by strangers, fed in feedlots, butchered in strange places in large groups, wrapped, packed and sold without our ever having to have blood on our hands.
No wonder blood makes us uncomfortable...
My best friend’s mother is suffering with a blood disorder that is diagnosed as hemolytic anemia. Her red blood cells are not reproducing quickly enough. She is tired all the time and depressed... she doesn’t feel like herself. If they cannot find a treatment that works for her, she may die. One cannot live without healthy blood. The last three years of my dad’s life were possible because of regular blood transfusions. I became a regular contributor to the Red Cross donor bank in an effort to help replace what my dad needed to stay alive. I would be surrounded by other people donating blood to be used in a variety of ways. At first, I was uncomfortable... it hurts a little to give blood... it smells funny... sometimes I would feel faint and have to lie down after giving blood... it made me feel queasy watching my blood flow into a bag... but the memory of my dad and his need helps me focus on the gift of healthy blood, not the process. It is a perishable resource and needs to be continually renewed.
I wish my church could reclaim the blood tradition of Christianity with all its messiness and pain. It is still for me such a powerful image of life giving, life sacrificing, life transforming, "life its ownself" in all its joy, suffering, renewal... death and resurrection... all in the image of the blood... We are, I think, the poorer for sanitizing our faith images by removing the ones that make us squirm. The squirminess is a sign to us that something powerful lurks under the surface and we need to face it... name it... claim it...
We are born in a mix of blood and water... some of us die in a mix of blood and water... blood is life... blood is death... blood is messy...blood is necessary...blood is a mystery... thanks be to God for the gift of the blood...