Psalm 62: “In you alone is my soul at rest. My help comes from You.”

At least in one medical school I've observed, students must spend a certain amount of time in a wheelchair to learn by experience what that entails. After some weeks of this myself, this seems eminently wise. Not to mention irreplaceable. None of us can really know from hearsay, a lecture or even observation what it's like to be confined to a wheelchair.

You discover how inconvenient objects and locales are for those who lack the powers of upright humans. You become a non-person for the free-standing adult who looks right over you and finds it hard to treat you as an equal. Others seem to think the condition contagious. It's shocking and humbling. Not only physically but emotionally you feel below others. You often must ask them for help or excuse the fact that you take up more space.

One young man in a wheelchair says that originally he was so stubborn that it was difficult for him to ask. Now, he says, “Whenever anyone offers to push me or do anything else for me, I take it.” You learn an almost childlike quality, the necessity of asking for services and objects, if not everything.

Perhaps not only medical students but all of us should have the experience of being in a wheelchair for at least a few days, better yet, a week. It might give more flesh and blood to our efforts to practice the sensitivity which is love in practice. It wouldn't be so much a matter of walking in another's shoes, as riding in another's wheelchair.

Psalm 27: “I believe I shall see the Lord’s goodness / in the land of the living.

Wait for the Lord; be strong; / be stouthearted, and wait for the Lord!”

Reply to Fr. Don at: DTalafous@csbsju.edu

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