What does that little tape running inside your head say?

Does it keep repeating ‘I’m stupid, I’m a failure,’ I’ll never be a success, I’m not really worth all that much’?

Well, press the pause button for a moment for there is also a still small voice, a whisper, which says to your heart ‘You are my beloved son/ You are my beloved daughter.’ 

This is the voice we can hear when we are still, when we have stopped for a moment, our rushing and pushing, our shoving and shouting.

When we are parked in our prayer space-that can be anywhere- alone, still and calm, listening to the silence.

‘Speak, O Lord, I have stopped my engine, Speak for I am listening.  Speak’.

…….

At a recent wake I sympathised with the mother on the death of her 21year old son. 

He had ‘special needs’ I said.

The mother gently corrected me by saying ‘Father, we don’t call them ‘special needs’anymore but  ‘additional needs.’

It got me thinking about how this term had changed over the years. 

As a young chaplain in St. Joseph’s Secondary School in the late 70s one class for each year group was given an awful name, E.S.N. –educationally subnormal.

Then it changed to ‘remedial’ – not much better. Other expressions not politically correct would include ‘committing suicide’ - now you ‘die by suicide.’

You commit a crime or a sin so it gives suicide an unwelcome negative image by using  the word ‘commit’ and offends those who have lost a love one in this way.

Also it’s ok to say ‘black’ about Afro- Americans but not ‘coloured.’

Finally the ‘deaf and dumb’ in Scripture simply means those who cannot hear or speak.

But now ‘dumb’ means ‘stupid’ so I usually replace it with the word ‘mute’ at baptisms or  whenever it appears in  the Gospel so I do not cause offence.

But getting back to those with ‘extra needs’, Jean Vanier has set up communities for them all over the world.

He tells how in one of those communities there is a man called Francois.

One day somebody asked Francois, ‘Do you like praying’?  ‘Yes’ he answered.

‘And what to you do when you pray’? the questioner asked.  ‘I listen’ Francois answered.  ‘And what does God say to you’?  ‘He says ‘Francois, you are my beloved son’.

THAT LADDER

As you may know an aluminium ladder took the impact of my recent fall.  In breaking my fall it also broke.

Last week I told my brother Hugh to take it and put it in the dump.  

"Paddy," he said, "stop and think ,that ladder saved your life.  Be grateful to it, put flowers around it, reverence it ,make it into a shrine."

I could understand where he was coming from so it has been reprieved.

I am now beginning to see what happened at a deeper level. For there is a Christ - like Lenten parable here. By taking on our burden of sin Christ saved us, even if the cost was to leave himself broken.  I will keep the ladder both as a reminder of how blessed I am to be alive   and of my salvation in Christ.

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