The consolations of sickness

John Donne wrote some of his most beautiful and profound work while in bed sick. The quote from him that everyone knows - the bit about the bell and for whom it tolls - comes from when he thought he had the Bubonic Plague. The depths of despair that serious illness could take someone in Donne's day were enough to give him some of the greatest epiphanies Western literature has about sickness and where it places man in relation to man, and man in relation to God.

My week-long virus is nothing like Donne's. I don't fear for my life, though I do fear the ever-increasing build-up of work I must do. I do fear parent-teacher interviews tomorrow night when I currently have no voice. But no, I don't fear my own death. And why not, I wonder? Is it because my own death simply does not seem to be looming like it was for Donne? He certainly wasn't on the brink of death then, but a man living in such times knew that death was something you cheated everyday, or it cheated you. In the 21st century we treat death with a kind of brazen naivety: an inexplicable mixture of indifference, taunting and the generally idiotic feeling that surely it well never actually happen to us.

Of course, there's a stage in any moderately serious sickness (by which I mean more than a head cold) where we encounter some of what it means to be desperately ill. We feel, in microcosm, what the truly ill feel on a full scale: we have, for instance, days of being unable to get out of bed, where others have weeks, or months, or years. None of this really compares, but it does give you the chance to reflect on sickness and on what it means to be healthy or alive. This, for me, has come at a time when I have decided I need to think more about heaven - about the hope that God holds out for all who believe in Him. It's an idea widely poo-pooed in our death-taunting/death-despising culture, but in John Donne's day, when death was a reality people continually faced, it was something you needed a response to. Today it seems weakness to hope in a life beyond this one. In previous times in history it seemed wise and realistic, for this life didn't offer terribly many hopes in itself.

So, being sick and therefore not experiencing all the joys of being alive, I have found myself reflecting on things like these:

- Thirst: The extraordinary feeling of filling a parched mouth with water; the inexpressible beauty of water's taste in a thirsty mouth, even though it has no taste at all; the thought that, in heaven, we will never be thirsty, and never fail to be satisfied by the continual quenching of our spirits.

- Just Being: The realisation that I have nothing in my hand to bring to God that will wow or amaze Him, but that what He asks of me is to be: to live in His presence, and to know that He is God; that some days, when I have nothing to offer, I should rejoice, because it means I can so much better receive from Him who has everything I need.

- Community: The importance of speech, of sharing words - questions, answers, thoughts on the week. Deprived of that, because I am deprived of voice, I feel something very much missing. This is not a "consolation" in itself, but it leads me to think of the joys that I will return to when human contact will be something I can enjoy again.

- Affliction and shame, and its removal: The feeling that you should not stand too close to people to avoid making them sick too; the isolation that this brings; the knowledge that Jesus stepped into our sickness and didn't care what it did to Him; the knowledge that He touched lepers, washed blind men's eyes clean with His own saliva, bent down and washed His servants' feet. This one will not be ashamed to sit right next to me.

For these lessons, Lord, I thank You that I can be sick.