Nay_ho_tze's Medicine Musings

thoughts on 
The Human Heart   

flesh and spirit are entangled 
and therein lies the fragility of human life 

broken heart strings
st francis of assisi statue
Did you know ... ? 
Due to the schism between father and son, 
the mother of St. Franicis of Assisi,
Dona Pica de Bourlemont, 
is said to have died of a 'broken heart'  

where flesh and spirit mingle
The mystic visionary, St. Teresa of Avila offers us another unique understanding of the human heart. Following is her own description of the vision of her transverberation 

“I saw an angel beside me toward the left side, in bodily form. He was not very large, but small, very beautiful, his face so blazing with light that he seemed to be one of the very highest angels, who appear all on fire. They must be those they call Cherubim…I saw in his hands a long dart of gold, and at the end of the iron there seemed to me to be a little fire. This I thought he thrust through my heart several times, and that it reached my very entrails. As he withdrew it, I thought it brought them with it, and left me all burning with a great love of God. So great was the pain, that it made me give those moans; and so utter the sweetness that this sharpest of pains gave me, that there was no wanting it to stop, nor is there any contenting of the soul with less than God”.
                                  (St. Teresa, Life…Chapter 19).
 

What makes this situation unique is that
during the 
canonization process,
St. Teresa's autopsy revealed that her heart
had been scarred by a puncture wound 

the transverberation of st teresa de avila

Did you know...?
Transverberation is akin
to 
Shamanistic Dismemberment

related reading:  Shamanistic Dismemberment, a rite of passage
                       
a mother's lament: stream of consciousness, interrupted