Suffering!

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“There are far too many silent sufferers.  Not because they don't yearn to reach out, but because they've tried and found no one who cares.”

          Richelle E. Goodrich

______________________________

 

I think therefore I am

I am therefore I think

 

I have been thinking a lot lately

About life, and death

About joy and suffering

 

There are days when I lift up my eyes

and throw my laments to the heavens

 

I did not ask to be born

I did not ask for all of this

 

I cherish life

I do

I know that for all the moments of despair,

there have also been moments of exultation

mixed into the loneliness, has been love

 

and there has been meaning and purpose too

 

but I was not prepared for this

for the complexity and pain

for the feeling of powerlessness

 

Someone once said

pain is inevitable, suffering is optional

 

but I believe that all of us

if our hearts are open

are people of sorrows, acquainted with grief

 

the only way to avoid suffering is (as Oscar Wilde once noted)

to become an observer of one’s own life.

to shut down, tune out

to disassociate

 

there are people who do that

who turn off their hearts

who seal off

and become dangerous and often malignant souls

who do untold damage because they do not see

do not feel

do not care

about anyone, or anything

 

but most of us cannot escape the pain, the suffering

that comes our way

 

not our own

and not that of others

 

for suffering is part of love

if we love we suffer

 

to truly be awake (no wonder so many don’t want to be ‘woke’) to others

is to feel pain and enter into suffering

 

and what is most profound is how

we are drawn into the suffering of others

 

indeed, it is perhaps our calling

as children of God, followers of Jesus

Jesus was that one of sorrow

that one who picked up and carried all the pain, all the suffering of the earth

carrying it, and redeeming it

touching it

 

and we are called to share that suffering

we are called to choose to suffer the pain

that comes from seeing and feeling, from entering into the suffering of others

and walking with them through it all

 

sometimes it is very hard

being there, being real

being open

to the pain

 

of infected bones that will not heal

of marriages on the brink of disaster

of addiction, and recovery too

 

open to the pain of cancer

and surgeries extreme and grotesque

 

open to the free-floating fear

and the hate and bias that is all too prevalent

open to the poverty

the despair

 

sometimes it is hard to enter into all of that

and to be there

with ourselves, with others

in the midst

 

sometimes it is hard to be the one that cares

 

in such times

when it all seems like too much

too heavy, too painful, too hopeless

in such times when we try to be there with (and for) others

all we can do

 

is turn to the One

who understands

who went through suffering

to the One who cares

 

knowing that we will never be alone

and that the One who shares our suffering

will also see us home