Embrace it!

Mark 8:35 Don't run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I'll show you how.

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.

The righteous will stand

Wisdom of Solomon 5:1 Then the righteous will stand with great confidence in the presence of those who have oppressed them and those who make light of their labors.

People want to be seen. People want their pain to be acknowledged, especially by those who may have caused it. The hardest thing for victims of childhood abuse is when that abuse is never acknowledged, or when it is minimized, or rationalized away with "it wasn't so bad". I think it is often that lack of recognition that encourages people to hold on to their victimization, simply in an effort to make it visible. Here, in this description of the last days, the final judgment, those who have been oppressed are finally being seen clearly by those who have denied what has happened. That is part of the great liberation described here.

I got such a wonderful image out of this. I saw crowds of people, those who had been abused as children, especially those who had been molested and told it was their fault, standing in the sunshine, robes bright with light, while those who had molested them and not taken responsibility for it lay below, enveloped in shadow. I thought of the farm laborers who wanted decent pay standing with them, and the CEO's who refused them that extra penny per pound of tomatoes, while living in luxury, huddling beneath. There are so many more possibilities, and you can probably come up with some of your own: women abused by their husbands; minority youth who are treated like criminals at every turn, so they become criminals; victims of crime, oppression, war, genocide -- all standing strong and proud in the face of those who have inflicted such pain and humiliation on them. There are probably many who belong in both groups -- the victims who grow up to be victimizers, or who, in their desire for revenge, become worse than those who initially victimized them, living out the endless cycle of violence and retribution.


But as I look into the faces of those who hover in the shadows, witnessing their reversal of fortune, the triumph of their victims, I have a secret hope, that in that moment they see the truth of their own wrongdoing. I imagine their hearts opening, and repentance blossoming as they see their victims with new eyes, as beloved, entitled children of God, not there to fulfill the victimizer's selfish purposes but to stand as witnesses to the grace that endures suffering and is not taken over by it. That is the radical message of Jesus. Love your enemy means to stand apart from that desire for revenge, that desire to get back at someone for what they have done to you, to break that cycle of violence and retribution that is passed back and forth between peoples and down through the generations. It is a commitment to continue to live life in the fullest way possible, guided by compassion, and not to allow bitterness and anger to restrict the soul in its passage. For that is what is seen in the eyes of those in the light: compassion, openness and joy, the commitment to reject the constricted role of victim and partake of the blessings God offers through forgiveness and surrender to His Will.

A pipe dream? Maybe so, but one I feel called to live in my own little way, and a vision of reconciliation that we have already seen lived out in South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Will we ever get rid of violence and oppression? No, probably not. But we can still build on this radical message of Jesus to make things better even in our flawed and chaotic world.

Prayer: Dear God, I have been so fortunate in my life not to fall prey to violence and oppression, but my very privilege can invite me into the oppression of others without knowing it. Wherever I feel a victim, let me open my heart in compassion and forgiveness towards those who harm me. And keep me ever mindful of those that I am in a position to victimize, that I may be aware of any suffering I cause and be called to recognize and redress it. Amen.

Have it firsthand

Job 42:5 I admit I once lived by rumors of you, now I have it firsthand -- from my own eyes and ears.

What answers all of Job's complaints, dissipates his anger and finally shuts him up is the direct experience of the Presence of God. All the time that he had lived before his trials as a good man, a righteous man, he was following the rules, but he never experienced God's presence,so it was all at some remove, all as if by rote. Now he sees and hears, he knows God, doesn't just know about God. And that makes all the difference. In Getting Involoved With God, Old Testament scholar Ellen Davis points out the transformation that Job has gone through by noting the differences in how he is presented as a father. In the last paragraph of the book, which one could easily skim past without taking much notice, she points out two unusual things. One, though none of Job's sons are named, his three daughters are, and the names are wild and fanciful. Two, he leaves his daughters an inheritance along with his sons. These are acts almost of recklessness in a highly patriarchal culture, certainly against the norm and against the grain for the "respectable" culture of his day. Just the fact of having children, having lost all his previous children in one terrible accident, demonstrates Job's new willingness to live with risk. As Professor Davis puts it, "Job, this man of integrity who was once so careful, fearful of God and of the posssible sins of his children, becomes at the last freewheeling, breaking with custom to honor daughters alongside sons, bestowing inheritances and snappy names. The inspiration and model for this wild style of parenting is, of course, God the Creator. Job learned about it when God spoke out of the whirlwind." Only the transformative experience of meeting the Presence, the Ultimate Mystery can account for this change in Job.

What about you? Do you live by rumors of God or by direct knowledge? Do you know about God, or do you know God? Prayer and other contemplative practices are all about being in the Presence of God, of experiencing firsthand something of God's power in our lives. This is what has made a difference in my life, has given me the experience of carrying God's peace within me, sometimes at the most difficult of times in my life. This is what transforms, gives me power to endure, even to thrive, in the face of difficulty, which inspires me to write this blog so that others might get some sense of what God's Presence might do in their lives. It's not about being perfect, or being protected from every danger, like some superstitious amulet that's supposed to ward off evil. No, it's about having the power and the presence and the fortitude to wade through the most difficult times we face without being taken over by them; it's about finding our own definition of who we are through God's grace, rather than as the victim of our circumstances; it's about resilience in the face of calamity, like the resilience of Job, who is able to start again after all he had been through, to have more children in the face of terrible loss, to risk it all for love. It is loving in the face of risk, enduring in the face of disaster, thriving in the midst of destruction that are the fruits of an active, yearned for connection with God, the true God, the Creator, the Whatever It Is that sustains us in the face of all we go through, that brought us into being and draws us to Itself through all of our days, our Alpha and Omega, our beginning and end, our Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer, our God, our loving, merciful God.

Prayer: Dear God, I am awed by Your Presence and Majesty. Help me to risk it all as I follow Your path, to offer it all to You that You may lead me to the deepest fulfillment of my soul. Amen.

You corrupted wisdom

Ezekiel 28:16 You corrupted wisdom by using it to get worldly fame.

I was at a seminar on spirituality and psychology several months ago and the presenter began by speaking about "The Secret". His comment was that the ideas of the secret were absolutely correct and 180 degrees wrong. It turns the notion of the spiritual life into a way to get more of what I "want" -- all the things that I think will make me feel secure and happy (material objects and wealth, fame and renown) which will only pull me more deeply into the world's values. Spiritual values, by contrast, are profoundly and unapologetically counter-cultural. Yes, I can use spiritual understandings, gifts and practices in this way, but it corrupts them and denies me the true fruit: a deep humility which allows me to enter the full richness of each moment, to be an integrated part of life on this planet which is as full of pain and suffering as it is with joy and happiness.

Suffering is the refiner's fire of the spiritual life, and if we try to avoid the inevitable suffering life brings we are condemned to skimming its surface without really engaging with it. So not only do we corrupt the spiritual wisdom offered us, but we miss the greatest gift they have to bestow: the transformation of our own hearts.

Prayer: Dear God, You have called me on a spiritual journey. Help me to stick with it through whatever life brings along the way, and teach me to value the true fruits of my spiritual path. Amen.

The time of the Judges

Judges 21:25 At that time there was no king in Israel. People did whatever they felt like doing. There was a king though, God was supposed to be ruling over Israel. But people forgot that and made up the rules as they went along. By this time, the end of Judges, we have a story of rape, murder and more than one bloody massacre. In other words, chaos. This is what happens when people set themselves up to rule their own little fiefdoms. And there the 12 Tribes were breaking apart! A man traveling thought he would be safer staying the night in an Israelite town, a Benjaminite town, rather than one ruled by "foreignors" (the Jebusites). He discovers total lawlessness, gives his concubine to be gang-raped and murdered to save himself, and then calls all the other tribes to seek revenge. So from one horrible wrong, everything escalates until you have Israelites slaughtering Israelites, and then kidnapping foreign women to be the wives of what's left of the tribe of Benjamin, in whose city the whole thing started. A brutal and bloodthirsty time.
Prayer: Dear God, I am so fortunate to live in a place and at a time which is relatively peaceful and under the rule of law and order. Open my heart to the sufferings of those who are not so fortunate: those who live in open warfare, who are the victims of genocide, refugees living in limbo and others who are oppressed and in danger. Touch their hearts with your presence that they might know how you love and cherish them even in the midst of the suffering they endure. Amen.