Relics

I've been thinking about this word "relic" for some time now thanks to an interesting article in Slate magazine. For most of my life, I always thought a relic was just an old leftover thing from the past--an old computer or one of those antique bicycles with the really enormous front wheel or just some junk in the backyard. However, thanks to this this article, I've come to realize that more specifically, a relic is a piece of some dead guy's body that has been preserved for people to venerate while worshiping. In the Slate article, this practice seems to be mostly a Catholic thing, but I don't think that it is limited to that one religious group.

To me, this practice is most peculiar just because it seems so exotically foreign to me. It was never a part of my childhood religious upbringing to include praying over some dead guy's dried out flesh. It turns out that when I visited Salamanca in Spain a few years ago--back before I'd become aware of this sort of thing--I saw the arm of some old bishop or other on display in a glass case at the cathedral in Salamanca. Natually, I took a photo, but only more recently do I understand the whole thing a little better. Here's my picture in all of its insensitive glory. I don't even know whose arm it is or what is so special about it. I'll probably burn for having taken this picture.