Physical Therapy

In today's New York Times there is a great piece in the Opinion Pages by Gabrielle Giffords called, "The Lessons of Physical Therapy." Here is a link so you can go check it out. I have spent some quality time in physical therapy (and still sometimes miss Neeti, my last PT), and I liked Giffords's reflections on the meaning of that time spent doing repetitive action. 

I appreciated what Giffords has to say on the third anniversary of the assassination attempt on her life. And a number of times as I read this I thought about how much this might make sense to us as a community of faith. First of all, Giffords is simply inspirational and the hard work she has done in the last three years to be where she is now is rather remarkable.

This description of what it is like to do rehab made me think about the life of faith. Giffords writes, "It’s gritty, painful, frustrating work, every day. Rehab is endlessly repetitive. And it’s never easy, because once you’ve mastered some movement or action or word, no matter how small, you move on to the next. You never rest." The repetitive nature of our life, and the constant action, hoping for small movements seems like what we are striving towards in our relationship with God, and in our relationships with each other. 

Giffords writes about her desire to fulfill a large purpose, and how the Sandy Hook school shooting helped show her a path. She and her husband decided it was their mission to change laws around issues of Gun control, even though they are both "proud gun owners." The language she uses here (larger purpose, fulfill and mission) strikes me as very religious. As religious folk this relates to our work of living into our reality as members of the Body of Christ, and what that activity might look like. We are called into being Christ's body in the world, and that means doing the service and mission work God calls us to do. 

Giffords reflects that her struggle to reform laws is a lot like her struggle to regain her physical abilities. She writes, "Our fight is a lot more like my rehab. Every day, we must wake up resolved and determined. We’ll pay attention to the details; look for opportunities for progress, even when the pace is slow. Some progress may seem small, and we might wonder if the impact is enough, when the need is so urgent." Some part of this seems very hard to me. I think it is in the pace of the progress. I am impatient (which sometimes can be good--I want to see change!). But I think the other part of it that can be hard is the marking of progress. It is hard to get a chance to step back. Here at St. Ann's (and I suspect at a lot of places) we go from event to event, Sunday to Sunday, Christmas to Epiphany Party (tonight: Hot Cider! King Cake!!!), but it is hard to hold onto a long view in order to see the progress and to see what we are building. 

So I will end this by saying Gabrielle Giffords is just amazing. She shows us that we should remember the slow, repetitive nature of our work as the Church and of the need to sometimes try to take a step back to see what we are doing here on the corner of Clinton and Montague!