{"id":17,"date":"2009-01-31T12:38:00","date_gmt":"2009-01-31T12:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/Wordpress\/EverydaySpirituality\/wordpress\/?p=17"},"modified":"2009-01-31T12:38:00","modified_gmt":"2009-01-31T12:38:00","slug":"spiritual-triggers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EverydaySpirituality\/?p=17","title":{"rendered":">Spiritual triggers"},"content":{"rendered":"

>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u2018The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new
landscapes but in having new eyes\u2019 (Marcel Proust)<\/div>\n

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I\u2019ve just returned to work after a period of longterm sick leave. Illness often sets us off thinking about questions such as:<\/p>\n

What happens if I can\u2019t go back to work?<\/div>\n

What happens if I\u2019m too ill to go out on Saturday night?<\/div>\n
What happens if I die?<\/div>\n

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Very different questions, but all are directed at a central sense of what makes life meaningful for us and how we comprehend a meaning to life if we cannot see ourselves in it making the contributions we are so used to making.<\/div>\n

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At the heart of it is a need to connect on some level to something meaningful, which obviously for those bed-ridden and suffering from longterm illness isn\u2019t always easy to do physically.
An ill person is embodied in a semi-functioning physicality. And what this does is to highlight both the importance of the body and its insignificance:<\/p>\n