Thanks to: PD photo.org
Kermit the Frog sings here.
“He makes me lie down in green pastures,” Psalms 23:2 (NRSV).
As an adult, I’ve had to learn to walk twice.
My spine is kinky, and I grow a lot of bone, which means I tend to squeeze off the spinal cord every few years.
In addition, arthritis has destroyed most of the big joints — shoulders, knees.
So I’ve racked up a lot of surgery and a lot of sack time. I quarrel with the verse, “he makes me lie down in green pastures.”
Then there’s pain.
“On a scale of 1-10, 1 being no pain, 10 being the worst pain you can imagine, what’s your pain level now?”
That nurse (all business, having to log her/his own functions on computer, may be out of work tomorrow because the public hospital is cutting a fourth of its staff, has three kids, an out of work partner and a minivan with stale coke open in the cupholders) qualifies for my instant dislike winner.
On a scale of 1-10, pain is … not a number.
It’s a groan nobody hears, a burn nobody feels. It’s anger that has no place to go.
I’ve had to lie down a lot more than I want to. When I gripe about it, the Almighty says, “Green pastures, John, green pastures!”
”You’re the boss,” I say.
I’ve learned from experience that God wins arguments.
Enforced idleness—green?
How?
Well, there’s the psalms. I read them aloud often. Every ten, I read 16 verses of 119, which all at once is mind numbing.
There is a sense in which their voice is my voice, or mine theirs. Even the hateful psalms.
Hate is human. When God gets it out of me, I’ll leave it out of the psalms.
I wish I had some deep, deep, deep insight into prayer. I don’t.
Prayer is listening, prayer is talking.
Prayer is being face to face with God, not in seclusion, not removed from life, but in the give and get of it.
When I was offering spiritual direction for a brief time, I imagined God sitting just behind my fellow struggler. I’d focus on God, while listening to the other person with my heart, my eyes, and any other faculty at hand.
That’s prayer: focusing on God.
Enforced idleness also gives me time to read. During my years of active ministry I never had time to read a book like Les Miserables.
Green pastures? I dunno.
On a beautiful spring morning I’d rather be out for a run with my beautiful lab Cinnamon.
But then I don’t have a lab.
And I don’t run.
Photo by Mary Fran
As a person who associates rest with weakness, but who now has to rest, this resonates powerfully.
As a person who associates rest with weakness, but who now has to rest, this resonates powerfully.
P.S. – Sorry, forgot to tell you great post!
I’m sure it does.
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