PROPHETIC
Many of you already know that just weeks after that post I suffered a three part fracture of my left humerus. And that there is nothing humorous about it. Being left-handed only doubly disabled me.
Until quite recently, I dare not even use a key board because as the song goes... "the wrist bones connected to the arm bone... the arm bones connected to the..." You get the point. The repetitive movement of key strokes caused intense shoulder pain. And so there has indeed been in many ways in my life, the sound of sheer silence.
My learnings, which still continue are many, varied and deep. I quickly realized that I could not live my 110 percent life with only 40 percent mobility. While at first angry and frustrated... I soon realized what my body was teaching me. A wise friend assured me or perhaps chastened me when he said "even high performance engines only perform at about 70 percent." Hmmm... so my 110 percent life wasn't realistic? or sustainable?
I also learned that moving more slowly through the world meant there were things I just could not do. Some I could parse out to others. Some things just would not get done. There was no sense fretting, the universe (or at least mine) had shifted. Putting it in practical terms, there was only one double batch of Christmas cookies this year instead of six which was my norm.
Beginning August 13th I was on a path I did not choose, but I quickly surmised that there were things here to learn. Not the least of which being that sometimes it takes a 2 x 4 to get my attention--or at least a life altering event.
There has been nothing graceful about how I got here. But it has been grace-filled. As I reflect back my stumbling into this new reality has at times been comical. For instance... not being able to sleep very long, or very well, each morning I dutifully went to my email and starred those things I wanted to act on and deleted others. After about three weeks, I realized my habit of starring and returning later to the email was begun because I didn't have the time in the morning to deal with them. AND YET, it was such a habit that even when I did have the time (no place to go, nothing to do) my habit was not easily undone.
Don't take this the wrong way, but it seems to me that through this circumstance, God allowed a lot of time and space for me to sit in the Sound of Sheer Silence I so desire; Silence that has always beckoned to me and beckons to me still. This time has been an awful, horrible, painful gift. Labor and delivery if I can use that metaphor...to accept and receive what I long for most.
There is an old fashioned Christian concept we don't talk about much anymore which defines this time in my life. Most often its used of seasons of prayer...but isn't all of our life our prayer? It comes to us from Ignatius the Spanish mystic--who writes about "Consolation" and "Desolation." So while at first glance, my injury might look like desolation...I've lived in it long enough to know that it was actually a gift of consolation. Not because of the fact of it-but because of where it led me.
Life, especially life lived in the spirit is not as simple as consolations are always good and desolations are always bad. Ignatius knew that. He knew that sometimes a life of consolation, comfort and ease can lead us to complacency and away from God; and that desolations far from being punishment are sometimes necessary and what we need to find our truth.
I'm living the consolation of a tri-fractured humerus in much silence. What are the current consolations or desolations in your life? What are they each teaching you?
I don't wish for this kind of consolation for you or for me. But its good to have the language and the theology that allows us to look at what we experience even as "desolation" and find something else there. As you use these concepts to "sit with" your life, I hope there are new learnings for you.
In grateful joy and peace,
Kathleen Bronagh Weller - THE CELTIC MONK
Comments
Post a Comment