I was supposed to be traveling this weekend but I am not. I am at home with a sprained foot and will be home from church tomorrow. It’s certainly possible to be at church without being on my feet all morning but the thing is, I wouldn’t be. I know myself. About twelve years ago I busted up both feet really badly in an accident and although it was agony to take one step, I got up out of my wheelchair and preached on my feet. Adrenalin carried me through.
I am listening to the wind howl and the rain blow across the house. I live close enough to the ocean that I can smell salt in the air when I go outside, which I just did to take the dog out. It is dark and stormy and witchy.
I have taken the opportunity of slowing down with this injury to spend a lot of time in silent reflection, and as always it is instructive and rewarding. God’s silence stands in stark, majestic contrast to my busy work, my studying and buzzing and planning and going. It stands in enormity in contrast to my pettiness, and in eternity in contrast to my quotidian temporality. I like knowing in these late October days that I will die someday, that I will lay down the fiery burden (May Sarton, right? “Now, Voyager?”) and enter into that stillness, that silent majesty. I will probably enter eternity as a noisy, singing spirit and God will have to smooth me out over a long time before I blend into the cosmic harmony. But don’t you get that way sometimes? You just thank God that we’re not vampires, that this doesn’t go on and on forever, this human comedy? One of the reasons I feel entitled to be this noisy is that I won’t last very long, so why not belt it out to the back row when you have your moment on stage?
I was just thinking about Jesus and how wonderful his ministry was at balancing the big prophetic work with the personal, healing relationships. Well, you know and I know, kids, that the personal, healing relationships are invisible to your critics and usually much more intense than any other kind of work we do, but to me, they are the place where I most feel the Presence that called me into ministry. The conversations, the counseling, the late night visits to the family in crisis, the phone call from the bereft widow that interrupts you during a social event, the beckon to the bedside of the dying when you were on your way to a friend’s wedding – that’s where the great, majestic silence of God enters my soul and gives me the great inner quiet, and then words to speak, or the wisdom to hold the silence.
Tomorrow morning when most of you are in church I will be in silence in my chaise at home, listening to the word of God in the wind and the rain. May the silent God give you shining words, and may the morning bring you beauty and strength.
Lovely.
Perfect.
Love it.
Thank you.
And all God’s children said “Amen!”
You are living the promise of God, “I will bless you and make you a blessing.”
Beautiful.
(I may contact you in the future for permission to borrow some of this)
Dear PB,
I, too am home today, recovering from a recent sugary to fix and repair some female things whose genesis occurred years ago from giving birth to two babies whose birth weights were off the chart. This is the fourth and last Sunday I’ll be away from church.
I resonate with the wisdom expressed in your post. Although sickness, injuries and surgeries aren’t a lot of fun, such occasions are opportunities for reflection of the kind you have written today. Our ministries often leave us little space and time to be still. Even on our days off and vacations, we are busy, distracted or seeking some form of escape.
On my post op-check with the surgeon, I mentioned whether or not the “brain fog” I was experiencing was the remnants of the anesthesia. His reply surprised me. It may true that there is a bit of the drug still in the system. However, he believes a good bit of the “fog” is because our brains have been so busy that our minds have been “trained ” into thinking,planning,reacting about what we need to do today, tomorrow and beyond. Therefore, when we literally must disengage from that busy routine, the mind feels unfocused and disoriented. Then he paused and asked me, “So, when was the last time you were able to disengage from your busy life and focus purely on the need to rest, sleep and heal?” I couldn’t answer.
So it is, that I have come to this time of recuperation with a sense of peace and gratitude – to have a time to reflect,pray
… and heal.
Thank you. Exactly the words I needed to hear as I ponder how to minister to a family whose son’s girlfriend died unexpectedly from a lung clot.
“I was just thinking about Jesus…. the wisdom to hold the silence.”
Thank you,my dear. That went straight into my highly selective Commonplace Book.
Thank you Dear One. Thank you.