Jesuit Volunteer Grace Ogihara was forced into stillness because of neck and back pain one weekend. She writes:
Though I otherwise would’ve been outside traipsing about Minnesota wilderness, I recognized my weekend being injured as sacred and precious time I wouldn’t have had otherwise. I’m counting it as a blessing after the fact. It was like God was literally making me be still, so that I might know Him better, just like the verse, “Be still and know that I am God.”
How are you practicing stillness this week?
Last Mission Sunday I was with a group of novices in an orthopedic hospital visiting and distributing Holy Communion to men and women on “forced stillness”, some for many months, even years.
During the sharing on the meaning of mission it dawned on everyone that their present mission is to continue trying to keep getting closer to God. We left them with smiles on their faces as it was expressed that in their condition it is God who moves towards them, even much faster. They strengthened our faith.
Thnx for sharing Grace’s experience…
I can relate to it.
Sometimes God just wants us to take a minute..
Grace i pray you get better and God bless!!
God has many mysterious ways of slowing you down. Even if your plans are different, his goal is to bring you closer to him with your whole body, and soul. He gently “nudges” you filling you with the quiet stillness of his own spirit.
Thanks for this reminder to be still. Years ago I had graced with an injury that limited my activity and I mobility. As I complained about my inability to do everything that I was accustomed to, a co-worker shared a poem that reminded me that while there is no music in a rest (for those of you familiar with reading music) there is the making of music in a rest. Thankfully, I came to realize that the injury was indeed a grace that helped me accept slowing down, being still, and seeing the hand of God at work in my life.
I’m meeting a woman today who has been brought down by a severe head injury. This is the perfect description of what God was doing as I recovered from mine. Thank you. I’ll be sharing this today
How very Ignatian! It was his injury that sparked his spiritual journey.
An old timer once told me “You know, I never saw a guy with a redhead on one are, a blonde on the other with $500 in his pocket walk into an Alcoholic Anonymous meeting and say ‘How do I get sober?'”
I’m not aware of who coined the phrase, “human doing as opposed to human being”, but I must admit most of the time I find myself in the human doing fragment of my life rather than as a human being created in the likeness of God.