My Tuesday book group is drawing into the final chapters of Meletios Webber's Bread & Water, Wine & Oil. It's been a thought-provoking study these past several months, and, given the topic of these last chapters, it won't go out with a whimper. This week's topic is one that polarizes most of humanity. We even have a rhetorical device to cover its discussion, Euphemism. This week's topic is Sickness and Death.
As a woman who is dealing with a chronic illness, I found much truth in Webber's comments. I offer below a few of his comments:
Sickness is one of the ways in which we are strongly encouraged to come into focus and to look at a variety of serious and important subjects: the significance of life, what it means to be alone, what it means to be dependent on other people, fear and desire, hope and anxiety, loneliness, isolation, and, ultimately, death. ...
Sickness and distress do get our attention. Sickness, in particular, accentuates the fact that we do not control our own lives. ...
We have to learn to sit back and be taken care of, rather than attempting to be in control. (162)
Healing leads to a new life; death also leads to a new life.
God is like a parent sitting through the night at the bedside of a sick child, caring and waiting, watching for possible signs of improvement.... (163)
There is a strong awareness ... the sick person is in the hands of God, and that God will provide healing. ... [anointing] is a solmn commitment by the sick person ... to place himself or herself completely and without reservation into the hands of God. (164)
I ... have to be aware that one day, by God's grace, I will be anointed and I will not recover from whatever physical condition is causing me trouble. That anointing, too, will be for "healing of soul and body," not an effort doomed to failure. (167)
To push death away is to push away life itself. (164)
As with other philosophical foundations of life, one's perspective of sickness and death reveals much about that person. I myself am in this stream of God's eternity, enjoying this moment, this viewshed, but always ready to be carried around the bend to see what He has in store for me there. And I know it will be ineffable.
*Painting by Edvard Munch, Sick Child, 1907.
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