I have come to believe that the primary purpose of the spiritual path is to engage our very humanness and the suffering that is an inevitable part of living. When I run from my suffering, I generally make it worse. If it is a painful emotion that I try to seal off, I often end up sealing off other feelings as well, like joy and love. If I try and avoid a painful situation, it is liable to get worse until I can't avoid it. And I know from my own life, if I run from challenges, if I think I can somehow escape them, all I am really doing is putting off the inevitable confrontation with whatever it is I am afraid of, and in the meantime it has probably just gotten more entrenched.
What following Jesus has shown me is how to embrace my suffering, by which I mean fully experience it without shrinking or shirking, with the love and support of God who is always with me. No, it is not always fun. Accepting and experiencing painful stuff doesn't make it go away. But I find I can bear it, with God's help, and the help of my community, and use it as an opportunity to learn more about the suffering of others, and as a catalyst to open my heart in generous compassion.
It seems to me that suffering gives us a choice: I can let suffering close me off to others, embitter me with a "Why did this have to happen to me? it's not fair!" attitude, or I can recognize that suffering comes to everyone, and the suffering in my life can help me better understand those who may be embroiled in a kind of suffering I can't even imagine. That is, I can close myself off to others, see my suffering as an individual fate unfairly meted out to me, or I can see my suffering as a bridge, a bridge of compassion that connects me with others. One direction leads to hardness of heart, anger, bitterness and isolation; the other leads to connection, joy and freedom. It seems to me that after 9/11 we as a nation had the opportunity to recognize, in the catastrophe that was visited on us, what we have in common with so many other nations that are suffering worse fates: the Israelis and the Palestinians; the victims of war in the Congo, Sudan and other places; the victims of terrorism all over the world. There was a moment that we could have built stronger relationships of understanding with places that might otherwise have seemed so entirely unlike us. We took a breath, and then moved quickly into "Us vs. Them". It was an opportunity lost. I don't want to lose that opportunity in my own life.
Prayer: Dear God, There is so much suffering in the world, and I can experience only a tiny part of it. I thank you for the ways you have opened my heart through suffering, that you have stood with me and helped me bear it. Give me that power to stand with others in their suffering, so that they may bear it and find the gifts that lie beneath its dark waters.
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