Too Clogged To Blog

Dear folks, sorry I haven’t written lately . . .

The thing is, I’ve been sick. How sick? Well, when I say that since Friday I’ve had no interest in a cup of coffee, those of you who know my java habits will assume I was in the local ICU. It seems that the Lord sendeth flu on the just and on the unjust which means that illness is a bad way of determining who is which. So I’m back at my desk hitting on about four of six cylinders and still not sure into which category I fall.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about being sick, since that was about all I could think about for a couple of days or so. C. S. Lewis actually enjoyed being sick because it provided a kind of de facto vacation. In a letter to his father following a bout of German measles Lewis wrote:

I wonder if you will think me affected if I number a small illness among the minor pleasures of life? The early stages are unpleasant but at least they bring you to a point at which the mere giving up and going to bed is a relief. Then after twenty-four hours the really high temperature and the headache are gone: one is not well enough to get up, but then one is ill enough not to want to get up. Best of all, work is impossible and one can read all day for mere pleasure with a clear conscience.

He goes on to talk about re-reading “some of my favorite Jane Austens” and when I first stumbled on that passage years ago I decided I’d do the same. Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice have been my sickbed reading ever since. This time, however, I sank into a Dean Koontz and I’ll leave it to others to decide what that says about the state of my intellectual development. The point of the quote for me is Lewis’ idea that illness grants amnesty from diligence, a sort of indulgence of the sin of sloth purchased at the cost of a certain amount of physical discomfort. “As soon as puke in toilet splatters, a soul from Purgatory scatters.”

The Rule of St. Benedict, chapter 36, states that sick brothers merit special care but must not dare to work the system.

The sick must remember they are being taken care of for the honor of God. They must not distress the brothers who care for them with unreasonable demands.

Still, Benedict realizes that at the best of times sick people are a pain in the cassock and offers a little Matthew 25 encouragement to the nurses.

Nevertheless, these demands should be suffered patiently, since a greater reward is obtained from them.

The Rule even lightens restrictions for the sick, allowing them regular baths and meat in their diet but cautions that a return to health means renewed discipline.

So here’s how it lines up: I’ve been sick, loafing around in bed reading pulp fiction while Becky beefed up the star-count in her crown by waiting on me, cleaning up after me, and chivvying doctors over the phone so they’d come across with the appropriate potions over the weekend. (What kind of medicine, you ask? Well, let’s just say that the phrase “Up yours!” has now become a medical prescription for me.) Now I’m back on the job, the work has piled up and the semester descends upon me like twenty feet of anchor chain. It’s “Once more unto the breech,” as Shakespeare’s Henry V exhorted his troops. Sloth is a deadly sin, the same as lust, and I dare not tolerate it even for a moment.

But this - just this: perhaps I have a new (though slight, so very, very slight) appreciation for those who suffer besetting illness. I say “appreciation” rather than “understanding” because I wouldn’t presume such a thing. Still, to think of how I’ve felt since Friday night, and then to think of feeling that way all day, every day, for an untold count of days - to know that between the pincer-movement of cause (cancer, perhaps, as has been the case with some of my friends) cure (chemo, radiation, surgery) and the uncertainty of outcome this may be the best I ever feel again - is a meditation that humbles me in the lifelong good health that I am so apt to mistake for a virtue instead of a grace.

We find the mere toleration - let alone the care - of the unwell as a lasting sign of grace. “I was sick, and ye visited me.” Certainly Jesus never wasted his words. We cannot tell who is saved by who gets sick; we can at least get an inside tip based on how we respond to those who do.

This entry was posted on January 8, 2008 at 11:45 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.