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Innerweave: The Wholeness Story Wil Alexander, PhD, founding director, Center for Spiritual Life and Wholeness |
This week I suggested to some senior medical students that they would profit greatly from sitting quietly for a period of time, just to listen to their lives. The response was less than enthusiastic.
Wayne Muller, in his book Sabbath, tells of discovering the same reluctance in a group of physicians on retreat. He comments:
"A doctor took me aside and confessed that for him, and for many of his friends and colleagues in medicine, part of their rush and hurry is fear of the terrible things they will feel in the quiet. They are so close to so much suffering and loss, they are afraid that if they stop, even for a moment, the sheer enormity of sorrow will suffocate and overwhelm them. The busyness of the medical model is, in part, a defense mechanismÑa way to skate over the rampant, tender uncertainties of the practice of human healing.
"Thus do our unspoken fears and sadnesses speed up our lives. We are terrified of the painful grief that is hot to touch, sharp and piercing, so we keep moving faster and faster so we will not feel how sad we are, how much we have lost in this life: strength, youthful playfulness, so many friends and loves, dreams that did not come true, all that have passed away. When we stop even for a moment, we can feel the burning, empty hole in our middle. So we keep moving, afraid the empty fire of loss will consume us.ÉIf we slow down we might be pulled by some gravity to the bottom of our feelings; we might drown in all we have lost. So we keep moving, never finding refuge, never touching the tendernesses that propel us into a life of speedy avoidance.
"While our speed may keep us safe, it also keeps us malnourished. It prevents us from tasting those things that would truly make us safe: prayer, touch, kindness, fragrance-- all those things that live in rest, and not in speed. Only when we take refuge in rest can we feel the company of the angels that would minister to us, regardless of what we were given. In the stillness, there are forces and voices and hands and nourishment that arise, that take our breath away, but we can never know this... know this... until we rest. This is what Jesus talks about when He speaks of the Kingdom of God."
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Tuesday, January 30, 2001 11:17 AM
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