Every minute of every day, I experience pain. People say how hard it must be, and I don’t disagree. It just is. I have experienced pain since my late teens. I recently turned 63, and the pain has really been both continuous and severe for the past 20 years. There are days when I complain [...]
Archive for the ‘pain and spirituality’ Category
1 Nov
The Meaning of Pain
Melanie Thernstrom, The Pain Chronicles. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010. EAN:978-0865476813 $22 approx. on line Reviewed by Ted Witham One purpose of religious faith is to make meaning. Christians especially find it difficult to make sense of chronic pain. As Melanie Thernstrom explains in her entertaining Pain Chronicles (yes, entertaining!), acute pain is [...]
3 Aug
Spiritual help for people with chronic pain
I know what it is to live day in day with high levels of pain. My doctors tell me that, like 5 -10% of the population, my central nervous system is misfiring and produces chronic pain. For me, this pain seriously impacts my mobility. I appreciate the medical help that I receive. I also know [...]
12 Apr
I can say Alleluia!
I wake on Easter morning with my wife’s kiss. “Christ is Risen!” she smiles. I hesitate before responding, “He is risen indeed.” it is a great day, but I feel just pain behind and in front. The Psalmist’s words were louder in my mind than Easter’s liturgical cry: ” Fat bulls of Bashan surround me [...]
13 Feb
The Glory of God is people fully alive
“Hope is engaged in the weaving of experience now in the process, or in other words, an adventure going forward.”
9 Feb
Trust: when to hang on, and when to let go
“Let yourself go.” In the boys’ school where I worked, I was often part of the team that took groups of boys out into the bush on camps. One of the favourite activities was abseiling. We would find a suitable cliff in the bush, perhaps 10 metres high. The instructor would go to the top [...]
6 Feb
The Messenger reviews my book
I am proud of the review by Ruth McIntyre in February’s Anglican Messenger. Her comments are generous. Read them below. SUFFERERS OF chronic pain, and those who care for them, will find great comfort in this short book. It does not recommend throwing away the prescribed medication, but offers carefully described ways to make the [...]
2 Feb
Immobile – or stable?
It’s been an unpleasant surprise to me to find my movements so restricted by my pain. I was upset recently not to be able to travel 3 hours to the city for the interment of my goddaughter’s ashes. I even find it difficult to travel to Dunsborough 30 minutes away. Being ‘stuck at home’ means [...]
30 Jan
Use your brain
Pain clinics usually have psychologists. That’s not because chronic pain is a mental illness, but because the mind has resources that can help us change the way we look at our pain. Pain psychologists are more like sports psychologists than ordinary psychologists. They are basically interested in getting us to perform better. There are parallels [...]
26 Jan
God Pictures
The worst thing that the Western church has done is that we have turned God into a man. Ask any six-year-old to draw God, and she will emulate Michelangelo and draw an old man with a white beard. The orthodox Christians, the Jews and Muslims have taken much more notice of the second commandment: “Thou [...]
