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Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: Empty and Full (06/04/09)
As part of a Christian women’s group, I help minister to those in hospitals, nursing homes, hospices and extended care facilities. Sometimes I pray out loud with the infirmed, sometimes just offer a smile and voice of support. An especially challenging area that I minister to has become my favorite. The Alzheimer’s floor of a religious community has become accustomed to the combination of music, touch and silence therapy that I utilize to help those connect once again joyfully to the Lord. It has enhanced my prayer life as well. Even the most pious Christian can occasionally grow lax, discouraged or dry. The same method I use on the Alzheimer’s ward assists me in my own dark night of the soul.

Fr. Thomas Green says in Weeds Among the Wheat, if our prayers become stagnant and without thought we can, of course, vary them or change our prayer routine. But don't give up on prayer. Learn to float. Empty yourself. Meditate. Listen.

"Floating is the goal of the whole experience of the dry well in prayer. The floater is not passive; one who is passive will sink, not float. At the same time, the activity of the floater is quite unlike that of the swimmer. The swimmer is in control of her own direction and speed, whereas the floater responds to and cooperates with the wind and current. The floaters activity is a dynamic receptivity: God is the sea in which he or she floats. Communion of this sort demands that every part of the mind and will be actively and joyfully handed over to the Lord for Him to use."

As my ministry continues, I depend more and more upon God to keep me afloat. I have found, like many others today (and detailed in Dr. Lauren Artress' account in Walking a Sacred Path) that "the soul - that deep, hidden, knowing sense within us - is malnourished. We mistakenly thought that the intellect was the avenue to experiencing the Sacred, to nourish the soul. We discounted the imagination and our other faculties of knowing mystery."

Prayers and speaking to and about the Lord are precious forms of spiritual communication. But half of communication is listening. Contemplation, or meditation is much needed sustenance for the malnourished soul. Releasing all outside thoughts, worries and negativity and communing with the Savior on a daily basis can strengthened faith, outlook and family bonds. It can open the heart and soul to all of God's
gifts. It makes one grateful. Gratitude is the heart of prayer.

So I begin the soft harp CD and sit eye to eye with my prayer partner, an eighty year old victim of Alzheimer’s that had taught Math at a prestigious university for over 40 years. She smiles – she says to remember me from last week. I nod and do not reply that I have been here every week for 2 years, just like this, holding her hand, listening quietly to music and attempting to fill the emptiness that illness can bring.

She closes her eyes and I close mine. Pity descends upon me first…this wonderful lady before me has done so much for God, so much for her church, her students and mankind that it is sad to see her life end this way. She was such a witty and vivacious servant of God that her ways were infectious and stimulating…

I allow myself to feel this sorrow and then allow it to pass.

The room is quiet except for the angelic music. I pray St. Francis’ prayer…Lord make me a channel of your peace…

My prayer partner and I begin a spiritual float. Nothing is heard interiorly or exteriorly other than the beautiful music. But we are swept away. Emptying ourselves to everything but God…

Nothing is heard interiorly or exteriorly other than the precious music. But I feel my emptiness being filled with…joy…happiness…peace… I pray only that my partner can feel this, also.

We both open our eyes. My prayer partner is smiling.

“So that is what it fills like to be filled with the Holy Spirit.”

Indeed.
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Member Comments
Member
Date
Patricia Turner 
06/12/09
Alzheimers - a very difficult thing to write about, yet you did so sensitively and in a very hope filled way. A very nice piece.
Nancy Gustafson
06/17/09
What wonderful work you are doing, and you have written about it so beautifully. I recently read a book on aging and illness by a nun who is handicapped herself. She says that even in the case of Alzheimer's disease, God is actively drawing the soul to Himself. What a relief to know that no tragedy that befalls us prevents Him from completing His work within us.