Spiritual Arthritis

“… when my anger goes on and on without my learning or changing anything then it is not plain anger anymore.  It has become bitterness instead.  It has become resentment, which a friend of mine calls ‘arthritis of the spirit.’  So there is another motivation for learning how to forgive – not only because we owe it to God but because we owe it to ourselves.  Because resentment deforms us.”

                                                              Barbara Brown Taylor, Gospel Medicine, p 10

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I wonder at times

How people get into the places they are in

Where they define others simply by negative stereotype

Where they are so quick to believe the worst?

Where they can disregard the basic humanity of the other

Disregard the fact that the person they so detest

Is a child of God

A carrier of the Sacred?

The judgments flow freely

Lazy

Druggie

Moocher

Takers

Losers

Animals

How can people look at

The person who is

Poor

Homeless

a refugee

struggling with mental illness

older

sick

and shut down their hearts

and attack

demean

minimize

marginalized

oppress

and exclude

It has something to do with resentment

It has to do with being crippled with spiritual arthritis

It is not a new ailment

Perhaps it is even a pre-existing condition

And it goes back to one’s sense

That if one does not have everything one wants

It has to be someone else’s fault

It has to be a matter of injustice

I should have a better job

I should be paid more

Women should like me

Men should adore me

My house should be nice

My car better

I should have all of this

AND I WOULD

Except for them

Resentment

It deforms us

It shrinks our hearts and shrivels our souls

It turns us in upon ourselves

It makes us small

What it steals must of all

Is our sense of gratitude

And our sense of generosity

Someone once said that suffering is the gap

Between what we have and what we want (or think we should have)

Resentment is a form of suffering

And God knows, we suffer

The antidotes?

Gratitude and generosity

Gratitude for what we have

There is always a reason for gratitude (at least I believe there is)

I remember once, lamenting the fact

That due to my own errors, my own stuff, I needed to step

Away from a job

In my head I also felt like I was stepping away from my future

From the respect of others

And then my neighbor lost a child to disease

And I was reminded of many small gifts that still remained

My own children, healthy and happy

We need to rediscover gratitude

We need to look for what is good in life

In our lives

Because gratitude leads to generosity

If I am grateful, and see my blessings, I am then freed

To give out my own abundance

(Even if that abundance is a simple as time

Or the ability to lend a helping hand)

I personally don’t want to be deformed

I don’t want to suffer with spiritual arthritis

So I am prescribing myself

Heavy doses of gratitude

Followed by the therapy of generosity

Because I have profound respect

For what resentment can do