Tuesday, September 06, 2011

Wangerin: pay attention! (the blessings of affliction)

Surely it's high time -  isn't it? - that we pay as much attention to the blessings of a long affliction as we do to the pain for which we curse it.  Please: it's not a man's peculiar interpretation or a woman's particular gift for a long-suffering patience which enables each to live the sickness better than another person does.  It's a faith available to everyone.  (Though there always is, of course, a learning curve.)

Pay attention!

In the Lakota tongue:  wachinksapa yo! - which meaning is closer to "Be attentive" than to something we do sporadically.  Be ever in a state of attention.

Wangerin, Letters,  p196-7

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