Worth Reading: on Faith, Disability, and Busyness

Last updated on: July 15, 2012 at 8:14 am by Amy Julia Becker

Worth Reading: on Faith, Disability, and Busyness 2012-07-12T16:57:11-04:00 Amy Julia Becker

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Really beautiful and profound reflection on what it means to be the body of Christ through reflection upon the art of Tim Lowly, whose daughter Temma has severe disabilities: The Broken Made Whole by Mark Sprinkle. He writes:

There is a sense in which we look at Temma and we want to affirm that she is made in the image of God by denying that the image of God has anything to do with her physical, material body. Indeed, one way to approach the problem made visible through Lowly’s painting is to imagine the soul as imparted to (or trapped in) the physical frame. This certainly fits with saying that the image-bearing role of humanity in general is an act of the grace of God, not something dependent on our abilities. But in the election model, we are reminded that God didn’t call Abraham just to a “spiritual” identity, but also to physically constitute a people sent into the very concrete physical world.

According to Tim Kreider, author of “The Busy Trap,” the “crazy busy” existence so many of us complain about is almost entirely self-imposed.

Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets. The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration – it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done. “Idle dreaming is often of the essence of what we do,” wrote Thomas Pynchon in his essay on sloth. Archimedes’ “Eureka” in the bath, Newton’s apple, Jekyll & Hyde and the benzene ring: history is full of stories of inspirations that come in idle moments and dreams. It almost makes you wonder whether loafers, goldbricks and no-accounts aren’t responsible for more of the world’s great ideas, inventions and masterpieces than the hardworking.

So go enjoy an idle weekend!

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