Inscription

We inscribe the narratives of our lives upon our bodies, in our clothes, our tattoos, our laugh lines, our smiles, and in the tracks of our tears. We create ourselves, layering heartbreak over politics over faith over lust until we are each a piece of collage art walking around, reading the art of others and being read in ways which we cannot control. We are born in the image of G…d and we spend out lives inscribing this image with everything we do, forming our bodies into a new and created being, and thus forming our G…d into a new and created being as well.

Why do we do this? What is this need for the marks of our lives to show – in real and physical ways? And then why do we take these marks and hide them in ways that make it impossible for other people to read them clearly and truly?

Example. I have a tattoo – poetry; written in German; tattooed on my arm where practically every day everyone can see it. I have had this tattoo for 5 years.

Practically every day someone asks me what the tattoo means.

I have never told anyone.

People ask me all the time why I chose to tattoo it where everyone could see it. People ask why it is in such a public place, and yet such an intimate, unshared tattoo.

I don’t know that I have the answers to there questions, but I do know that we all do it. We armor ourselves in our clothes, our jewelry, our smiles, our growls. We build a shell of tattoos, binders, ties, dresses.

We do this to bodies born in the image of G…d. We do this to the image of G…d as it is reflected in each of us.

I believe in a loving G…d, in whose image I was born. I believe in a G…d whose image is so broad, so magnificent, so all encompassing that it contains everything I could possibly do to my image. I also believe in a G…d who constantly changes and evolves as we change and evolve. What does this mean for the image of G…d, as I tattoo new and unimagined things? What does this mean as we inscribe ourselves and simultaneously inscribe G…d?