Journey to the Centre of the Soul

 

"Beautiful, fragile human skin."

As you've probably ascertained by now, I'm full of opinions and thoughts and scarcely lack the wherewithal to convey them. In moments of deep poignancy, however, I find myself without words. Beauty strikes me mute. 

The above scene had such an effect, though not when I saw it initially. At first, I simply thought it was a tender, touching moment between Eleven and Clara. I had no idea what it stands for until God slammed me with it in church, the next morning.

WARNING

If you haven't seen series 7's "Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS," then you might want to wait to read this post. It contains spoilers to the episode's plot. Duly noted? Geronimo.

Saturday night

I watched the episode, came to this scene, and found it gorgeous. The Doctor and Clara make it to the "centre" of the TARDIS only to find it shattered beyond repair. The Doctor is overwhelmed and feeling like a helpless failure. His oldest companion, constant caretaker and true wife is on the verge of destruction and he is unable to save her. He stands in the wreckage, completely lost, when Clara grabs his hand. (That in itself is a blog post. There is often nothing so powerful as the ministry of presence, but I'll save that for later.) It takes him a second, but he notices she's injured somehow, so he investigates. 

She has scars from the "big friendly button" on her palm. Scars in her "beautiful, fragile human skin." Scars that reveal to him the way to save Sexy and prevent everyone's deaths. Yay, Clara! Yay, Doctor! Yay, Sexy! Everyone goes home, and presumably the TARDIS is more friendly toward the new girl in the control room. What a great ending to a great story on Doctor Who Saturday. 

Sunday morning

My church has been serving communion pretty much every week for the past couple months. We do the little grape juice cups and wafer squares. Sometimes, communion is taken individually, whenever you feel led to walk up and grab the elements for yourself. Sometimes, however, the whole church family takes communion at the same time, which means the pastor has to wait until every last person in the rather sizable sanctuary is ready. Which means that those of us who sit in the front wait a while with the little cup and bread square. 

I'm a pretty tactile person and I tend to fidget when I'm holding things, so I ended up poking my hand with the sharp corners of the bread. After a few times, I realized it hurt a little, which I thought was appropriate, since Jesus' hands were pierced on the cross. And, you know, communion is about commemorating his sacrifice. Bread = body broken for me, wine = blood poured out to cover my sins. As I poked my hand and started to think about how much more his hands must have hurt, this exploded in my head and made me want to cry:

"Beautiful, fragile human skin."

Jesus was fully divine, but also fully human. (That's the hypostatic union.) He had beautiful, fragile human skin. He has scars on his hands. His scars signal the way for salvation, just like Clara's did. Only his scars don't undo time - they create a future. 

Beautiful, fragile human skin

Saved the world.

The scars lead the way to salvation - 

Beauty and hope in the pain.

Grab hold of the hand scarred for glory

and run when he calls out your name.

Until next time! May you remember your big friendly button.

Katya