PT: An Unusual Dance

For the past three weeks my routine on Mondays and Wednesdays is to get up and walk down the street, get on an elevator and head in to meet Jason who is my physical therapist (helping to get my ankle and foot to heal).  We measure the foot, stretch, pull, twist, lift . . . beyond what one might think is humanly impossible.

Each day I get up excited to go. Yes, I did say "excited to go." It somehow has been my time for me and taking care of my foot and my spirits. In an odd way it has become my prayer time. And no, the prayer isn't, "please God don't let him torture me too much." Instead I find myself thinking about the ways I can begin to take better care of my physical and spiritual self. Riding the bike I close my eyes and concentrate on letting go of my worries. The Monday and Wednesday crowd has become a little bit of our own community. We check to see how our progress is and we cheer each other on. It is almost a play time.

In my preparations for getting our Rite 13 program (ages 11-13) ready I ran across this poem.  In its own way it speaks to what this time has been for me. I wonder how it might speak to you?

There is always an enormous temptation in all of life to diddle around making itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys for itsy-bitsy years on end. It is so self-conscious, so apparently moral, simply to step aside from the gaps where the creeks and winds pour down, saying, I never merited this grace, quite rightly, and then to sulk along the rest of your days on the edge of rage. I won't have it. The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright. We are making hay when we ought to be making whoopee; we are raising tomatoes when we ought to be raising Cain, or Lazarus.

Ezekiel excoriates false prophets as those who have "not gone up into the gaps." The gaps are the thing. The gaps are the spirit's one home, the altitudes and latitudes so dazzlingly spare and clean that the spirit can discover itself for the first time like a once-blind man unbound. The gaps are the cliffs in the rock where you cower to see the back parts of God; they are the fissures between mountains and cells the wind lances through, the icy narrowing fjords splitting the cliffs of mystery. Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn and unlock-more than a maple-a universe. This is how you spend this afternoon, and tomorrow morning, and tomorrow afternoon. Spend the afternoon. You can't take it with you.

-Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (New York: Harper & 

This coming Sunday we welcome as guest preachers our youth and adults who went on a Pilgrimage to Scotland and Northern England this summer. Their journey took them to our Celtic History. They went to Edinburgh, Glasgow, Lindisfarne, Iona and a few other places.

On August 26, they preached at the services at St. Christopher's (our companion church for Journey to Adulthood). To honor their journey our 10:30 service will bring worship from the community of Iona.  

Come and hear a little of their journey. Help support our young adult ministries!  

Here is a little of what they explored:  

The Call of Aidan, Bishop of Lindisfarne

(Instead, they sent a new bishop named Cormán.) . . . But the people of Northumberland, where Oswald lived, were stubborn heathens; and, though they were good to friends, they were rough and stand-off to strangers, as they are to this day. The learned Bishop whom the Abbot had sent from Iona could do nothing with them. He preached, he argued, he threatened, but those sturdy north-country men folded their arms and turned away.

So this Bishop sailed back to the island of Iona in great discontent. "What is it, brother?" said the monks of Iona, "Why have you returned so soon?" "Alas!" he said, "these people are barbarous and stubborn. I have done them no good at all, and no one can convert such a race." The good Abbot leaned forward in his chair with sorrow on his face, and all the brothers sat gloomily round; for they longed always to bring men to Christ, and this failure was very bitter to them. "What is to be done," they asked, "to save this people?" . . .

. . . And one man heard, and his heart was stirred with compassion for that land and its people. To open his heart to this could cost him everything: leaving the island he loved, the companionship of his brothers, their prayer and work. Were there not others still to be reached much closer to home? If he stayed seated among his brothers no one would notice him, no one would know what he had heard in his heart: the cry of the desert, "Come over to Northumbria and help us."

"O Lord," he prayed, "give me springs and I will water this land. I will go, Lord. I will hold this people in my heart." A moment later it was his own voice, the voice of Aidan, that broke the awkward silence. "Perhaps, my brother, if you had spoken with more gentleness, and of the love of Christ, giving them the gospel to nourish them like milk is given to a tiny baby, then you would have won them and remained among them."

Aidan left Iona (where our J2A pilgrims spent part of their pilgrimage) and went to the Holy Island of Lindisfarne (where they also journeyed.) He founded the first monastery on Lindisfarne and became the first bishop of Northumbria. Aidan of Lindisfarne - who is also sometimes called the "Apostle to Northumbria" - is credited with restoring Christianity to what is now South-East Scotland and Northern England. He died in 651.

[1] The first three paragraphs of this reading are from The Little Lives of the Saints by Percy Dearmer (London: Wells Gardner, Darton & Co., 1904). The next two paragraphs are from Celtic Daily Prayer, © 2002 by The Northumbria Community Trist Ltd. (San  Francisco: HarperCollins) p.158.

This Sunday, October 7 is the first session of Catechesis of the Good Shepherd.  We begin at 9:35AM 

Grace Church will present David accompanying the movie during the Halloween Party extravaganza at Grace Church on October 31, 2012 beginning at 7:30 p.m.  Admission (pay at the door) is $20 for the movie, but is reduced to just $10 if you come in costume!  Spread the word!   Join the event on our Facebook page. 

We'll next meet on October 23 (note date change) at 7PM in the Parish Hall.  Remaining meetings will be on October 30 and November 6. Join us as Steve Fanning, history scholar of late antiquity and the Middle Ages leads us in discussion of "The Byzantine Empire and its Religious History (250 -1453 A.D.)."

The text for the class is A Concise History of Byzantium by Warren Treadgold. Hardback and paperback editions are available on Amazon.com, half.com and barnesandnoble.com.

Contact Linda Ivey Miller with questions. lindaiveymiller@gmail.com

Join Grace Rotarians for The Harlem Ambassadors vs. The Rotary Rascals on October 11 at 7PM in the Sister Michelle Germanson Athletic Facility of Trinity High School, 7574 West Division, River Forest. Please see Jim Deuel, Charles Wells, Nancy Teclaw, Ade Onayemi, Angelika Kuehn or Wendell Rayburn for tickets.  All proceeds go to local rotary initiatives.