Bouncing Back
I never dreamt, months ago when I chose this Sunday's sermon topic, that the week before would hold such widespread devastation and pain. That close to a thousand Iraqi civilians would die in a stampede on a bridge as they walked toward a holy shrine, that a hurricane of incredible strength would hit the gulf coast, affecting hundreds of thousands of people. The scale of the damage is simply unimaginable. Each time I pick up the paper or turn on the tv, I see images of people in pain - people scared and hungry and lost as they try to make their way to safety, as they search for their relatives and friends, as they begin to pick up the pieces and try to make some sense of the tragedy that has come their way.
I have no doubt that you have all heard the stories this week - stories of people risking their lives and their meager supplies to help others, stories of people leaving their own lives of comfort and safety to make their way to those hardest hit, stories of people reaching deep into their hearts and their wallets trying to make a difference - and among these, stories of evil as well - stories full of fear and pain - stories of people hijacking relief supplies, attacking rescue workers and one another, looting and stealing and using these terrible crises for their own benefit.
These stories we hear offer us real life examples of pain and suffering - examples writ large on our tv screens, in our newspapers, on the stage of the world - stories in all of their caricature and complexity that ultimately reflect the experiences of our own lives. The events of this past week speak for themselves, offering evidence of the reality we all know and sometimes try to hide from - that pain and suffering inevitably come our way - and while we may not have been hit by a hurricane or trampled in a stampede this week - not one of us is immune to suffering, whether it comes by choice or by circumstance, by disaster or by design, over the course of our lifetimes, we will all know pain and we will all know loss - and we will all be left, in its wake, with choices, hopefully turning away from violence, from isolation and despair - turning instead into life, struggling to survive, slowly putting the pieces of our life back together, trying to make some sense of our experience.
In the wake of great tragedy, it can take time to make sense of our experience - especially when we are still struggling with basic survival or with overwhelming grief and anger. It can take time to turn into the search for strength and wisdom, it can take time to be like the woman in the poem - a woman who speaks to a tree in place of her son, and olives come - a man who builds a house and says I am native now - a boy living in a country at war who writes poems and paints pictures of birds whose wings span two roofs at once. It can take time, and sometimes it is simply too soon to think about bouncing back - about resilience - when all we can do is take comfort where we can - putting one foot in front of the other and showing up for life.
When we find ourselves struggling with some great upheaval in our lives, we often turn to religion and science for help in making sense of our experiences. I turn, again and again, to the Unitarian Universalist author I spoke of two weeks ago who began writing the book, Learning to Fall: The Blessings of an Imperfect Life, just weeks after he was diagnosed with Lou Gherig's disease or ALS at the age of 35. He writes, "I turn to religion in particular because it is with religious language that human beings have most consistently, rigorously, and powerfully explored the harrowing business of rescuing joy from heartbreak."[1] Rescuing joy from heartbreak. Is it not the honest and difficult work of a lifetime? Rescuing joy from heartbreak? Making of our suffering something beautiful, something holy, something useful?
We all know stories of people who have survived horrendous tragedy - of people who have transformed their experiences of suffering and pain into engines of inspiration, into spiritual and emotional growth that draws us forward in awe - wondering how we might do as they have done should such devastation come our way. Helen Keller, Victor Frankl, Anne Frank, Nelson Mandela, Rubin Carter, Christopher Reeve, the inner-city underdog kid who makes her way to college - the thousands of nameless rescue workers pouring into the gulf, the hurricane victims themselves who are reaching out to one another, sharing the little food, shelter, and comfort that they have, that the suffering of one more might be lessened. These stories tell the tale of inspiration, of hope, of human potential.
Amidst these stories of hope come also, always, the stories that show the more difficult side of our human nature - the stories of people unable to bounce back in that moment after tragedy and pain. Sometimes these stories are quiet - we may know them in our own lives and in those around us - people stuck in anger and despair - unable to regain their footing or their sense of hope and purpose in the world after the loss of a loved one or a job, a devastating illness, or a terrible twist of fate - and sometimes the stories are desperate and dramatic - stories of individuals turning away from hope and taking others down with them, stories of people turning in to violence, to destruction, perhaps inflicting their own experiences of pain and loss on others, or perhaps giving up on life altogether.
We all know individuals who have achieved miraculous things under nearly impossible conditions and we all also know people who have given up the fight, people who feel cheated and bitter, trapped by their circumstances. What is it? What is it that causes one person to turn to hope and one person to turn to violence in the wake of the very same tragedy? Why do some people use their experiences of pain and suffering as an opportunity to grow - to develop in character, compassion and insight through all that life hands them - while for others the pain and loss is so great that it swallows them whole - leading to a life of despair, anger and isolation?
These questions fascinate me - and in my search for answers I turn not only to religious teachers, but to science and psychology as well. One particular psychologist, Dr. Polly Young-Eisendrath, professor at the University of Vermont College of Medicine and author of the book, The Resilient Spirit: Transforming Suffering Into Insight and Renewal, answers the question this way. "We know now from longitudinal studies," she writes, "that approximately one in ten people who grew up in difficult conditions...is exceptionally competent as an adult." What is it "that protects some people from later entanglements after having been abused or traumatized, while others re-create their childhood suffering in their adult lives? The common ingredients in struggling against loss, pain, and cruelty," she says, "are help, hope, and meaning."[2]
Help, hope, and meaning. The ten percent of children who grew up in incredibly difficult conditions yet managed to thrive while the other 90 percent fell by the wayside shared three common characteristics in their lives. Help, hope, and meaning. While there are other factors, of course, in bouncing back - factors like time, courage, perseverance, humor, access to resources, and so many more - help, hope, and meaning, I believe, are the most necessary of all, and luckily for us, all three of them are available here at our church.
If we are to transform our pain into the source of our power, Dr. Young-Eisendrath says and I agree -we must have help. We cannot do it alone. We need people to witness to our struggle, to tell and hear the truth alongside us, to comfort and challenge us along the way. We offer this help to one another when we share deeply, when we tell the truth and listen deeply, not shying away from places of pain and despair.
If we are to turn our experiences of loss into opportunities for transformation, Dr. Young-Eisendrath says and I agree, somewhere deep inside of us, we must find hope. We must believe, at some level, even when those all around us seem trapped in misery, that there is a way out, that things can be different for us in time. We must be able to imagine, if only for an instant, a different future, trusting in the passage of time and letting go of the sometimes tempting draw of despair to fall in and never come back out. As people who believe in human potential, as people who believe that change is possible, that each and every person is capable of living a life of worth and dignity, hope can be found here.
But most importantly of all, I believe, if we are to make it through our difficult times and turn them into opportunities for spiritual and emotional growth - we will need to make some meaning out of our experiences. "The capacity to be resilient," Dr. Young-Eisendrath writes, "to respond to difficulty with development, is rooted in many diverse factors, but it consistently depends on one thing: the meaning you, the individual, make of where you are."[3] The capacity to be resilient, she believes, depends on the meaning that we, as individuals, make out of where we are.
This claim, that the meaning we make of our experiences stands as the single most important factor in our recovery from loss, is I believe, very good news indeed. Of all the possible variables in the equation - of all of the elements to consider in how pain and suffering might impact us -of all of these, the only element that we have complete control over - the meaning we make of the experience - turns out to be the most important one in the bunch when it comes to doing the work of alchemy - of rescuing joy from heartbreak, of transforming our suffering into the growth of our soul. This discovery puts the ball squarely into our own hands, I believe - asking us to consciously choose, when we can, what we will make of the inevitable pain that comes our way.
As Unitarian Universalists - the stuff of our lives is especially important - it is, in fact, the stuff out of which we build our faith. We test our beliefs, our ideas about how the world works and our place in it against our conscience, against the workings of our mind and our reason, and against the experiences of our individual lives. The experiences of our life are fertile ground as we set about the task, as Emerson taught, of growing a soul. Our individual experiences - the gifts and tragedies of our shared life together - put our values and our beliefs to the test - calling us to openness and flexibility, asking us over and over again to wake up, to re-evaluate and re-align our lives.
As we consciously re-evaluate and re-align our lives, especially in the face of suffering, we may find ourselves facing a long line of questions as we struggle to sort things out.
Is the universe a fair and just place, is it indifferent, or is it cruel? Did I cause this tragedy, do I deserve this pain, or did it come to me by random circumstance? Is my pain a punishment from god? Was I spared from something worse, am I being tested? Can I grow through this pain through my own effort or must I rely solely on the grace of god? Can I make things right, is this my only chance at life, can I, can we, really build a better world?
All of these questions are theological in nature - and the answers we give, even the questions we ask - lead us to make meaning of our experiences in different ways.
Several years ago, I served as a hospital chaplain in Chicago. I was there on a three month internship and my training lasted all of a week. Most of the members of my internship group were young, like me, and had little experience in offering pastoral care. Luckily for us, and for the patients, two nurses from the NICU - the intensive care unit for very tiny, very sick babies - insisted on talking to each entering class of intern chaplains. They got us for two hours on our whirlwind training tour, and they took advantage of every minute. When we arrived on their unit, they sat us down for a stern talking to and they handed each of us a copy of a book that the nurses on the unit had found - It was a compilation of quotes, simple sentences that previous chaplains, nurses, and friends had said to one set of parents on the unit - simple sentences that had done untold, unintended damage to people in intense pain. We immediately cracked open the book to find cliches like, "I guess God just needed another angel in heaven." "You can try again." "It's good that she died so young." "Don't worry, God doesn't give you more than you can handle." We read on and on - all of us finding some sentence, some phrase that had come across our lips or through our minds at one time or another when in our own discomfort, in our quest for something, anything to say that might ease someone's pain we unwittingly placed a system of meaning making - our system of meaning making - onto someone else's experience. It was a sobering two-hours there in the NICU, to say the least, and it was a sobering three months.
I learned that I had to find my own way, my own words for times of suffering - for myself and for others. I had to learn to listen and to ask questions first, to sit in silence, to allow people their own time and their own space with their pain. And I found in myself the firm belief - that while I wish it were otherwise, suffering is an unavoidable part of the human condition, and pain can be an incredible engine for human development.
The critical element in the equation, I believe - the single-most important factor in rescuing joy from heartbreak lies in our ability to make useful meaning out of our experiences.
What will we make of the inevitable suffering that comes our way? What are the stories we will tell ourselves? Will we choose, as Robert Bly advised, to think in ways we've never thought before? Will we choose to find the tender spot in our minds where hate won't grow and lean in to touch it's riddle -it's wind and seeds? Will we rise up again, trusting in our new-found courage, trusting in the intimate connections with others we have forged through our loss, trusting in the depth of our faith - of our innermost beliefs now tested and tried by all that life can bring? Will we choose, in time, to live awake and aware, running from nothing, doing the honest and difficult work of a lifetime, rescuing joy from heartbreak, turning suffering into deep compassion?
No matter how late it is in our lives, as the poet says, no matter how long we have carried our pain - it is possible to put it down - to make meaning and life of our experiences. We must, I believe, because everything comes next.
May it be so, and Amen.
September 4, 2005
- Philip Simmons, Learning to Fall: The Blessings of an Imperfect Life, xiv. (New York: Bantam Books, 2003.)
- Polly Young-Eisendrath, The Resilient Spirit: Transforming Suffering Into Insight and Renewal. Perseus Publishing, 1996, 64.
- Polly Young-Eisendrath, The Resilient Spirit: Transforming Suffering Into Insight and Renewal. Perseus Publishing, 1996, 22.