The Blood is the Life

Now the Christian church was founded on blood, strengthened by blood, and augmented by blood; yet nowadays they carry on Christ’s cause by the sword just as if He who defends His own by His own means had perished. And although war is so cruel a business that is befits beasts and not men, so frantic that poets feign it is sent with evil purpose by the Furies, so pestilential that is brings with it a general blight upon morals, so iniquitous that it is usually conducted by the worst bandits, so impious that it has no accord with Christ, yet our popes, neglecting all their other concerns, make it their own task.¹

Blood defends the faith, establishes the borders of nations, and strengthens – or so we say – the bonds of nation and brotherhood. We use blood as a demarcation of rites of passage: blood-brothers, the blood of the first battle, the first kill, the blood of menstruation, the blood of birth, the final blood of death. The blood – as so many of fiction’s vampires seem so fond of saying – is the life. But it is also the death. It is the fluid that marks the passage from this life into the next – or into whatever it is that awaits us, be it another life or simply the long silence at the end of our fitful lives.

Blood can be beautiful. It flushes our cheeks in moments of passion or anger or embarrassment. It warms our skin, fuels our bodies, and makes us alive. Bright red blood is, in fact, a very pretty color. It draws our attention, inspires our curiosity and our poetry.

Blood can also be ugly. It stands for loss, death, and pain. It congeals and dries into a coppery, muddy color unlike anything else. Dried blood screams its identity. It stains and doesn’t come out. It crusts and flakes and nevertheless retains that strangely sweet-salty-coppery scent that makes our mouths water and turns our stomachs. It makes us – like Lady Macbeth – want to wash our hands.

Blood incites panic. It howls in our heads that primal scream of bad thing! We want to stop its flow, stifle the brightness, the liquidity, of that precious, disgusting fluid. Blood makes us faint, makes us scream, makes us vomit. Blood is a sign that something is very wrong. Ask any parent or teacher – blood is bad.

And in today’s world, blood is a carrier of disease – “blood-borne pathogens” are the new hidden threat. HIV. AIDS. Hepatitis. The silent and invisible monsters that hide inside our blood.

And yet, so much has been built on blood. The Church, as Erasmus notes above, the nation (pick one), what we so desperately cling to as “freedom.” Built on blood. Mortared with a paste of blood and dirt and crushed bones and hopes. “Founded on blood, strengthened by blood, and augmented by blood.”

And still, our politicians, our armies, our supposed saviors, “neglecting all their other concerns, make it their own task.”

In the thousands of years of civilization on this planet, we haven’t figured out a way to solve our differences, to build our cities and our societies, without blood. We mouth the words that “the pen is mightier than the sword,” murmur platitudes that say “give peace a chance,” and click our tongues in censure at the violence in other places, but we do not acknowledge – do not want to acknowledge – that we are creatures of life and death, creatures of healing and violence, creatures of blood.

I do not say that I support war. I do not say that I am in favor of violent means as an end to conflict. I do neither. But neither to I deny the violent impulses I have – I don’t follow them, but I also don’t deny them. Our society is one in which violence is a source of entertainment. It makes us feel good, provides our catharsis. We revel in shadenfreude. We want to watch pain. We want to see blood. We’re just happier when that blood isn’t real, when the shiny red drops are corn syrup and food coloring, starch and dye. When they wash out or wipe away. But they, for all their falseness, are still drops of blood. Symbolic, yes, but blood, nonetheless.

I say that blood does us more good when it stays inside our bodies than when it is let out. But I also say that it has a place in our lives. Every woman who menstruates, who has given birth, knows what I mean. Everyone who has skinned a knee, cut a finger, scraped an elbow, knows what I mean. Everyone who has lived rather than died because someone else gave a pint of blood knows what I mean. Everyone who has waited to hear the yes or no of a blood-borne pathogen test knows what I mean. Blood is a part of us, a part of our society, a part of who and what we are.

I am a creature of blood. So are we all.

1 Erasmus, The Praise of Folly, 100-101.