"You can hold back from the suffering of the world...but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering that you could have avoided." - Franz Kafka
Neva, our three-year-old, has a new favorite bedtime story: We're Going On a Bear Hunt. It's about a family that sets out to find a bear and runs into many obstacles along the way - a river, a swamp, a storm, a dark forest. At each confrontation, the family pauses, contemplates and then utters the same refrain: "Oh well," they say, "we can't go over it, can't go around it, can't go under it, so I guess we'll just have to go through it."
And each time they do.
Every time I read the story to Neva, I'm grateful she's getting this lesson at such an early age. I'm also grateful for myself. Most books get pretty old pretty quick. But reading this one repeatedly and chanting that mantra over and over seems right. That we "have to go through it" is not a lesson we ever really learn, is it? It's a lesson we have to learn over and over again, because avoiding pain is a big part of who we human beings are.
Rachel Remen, one of my favorite writers of late, tells the story of being introduced to a family tradition, "The Puzzle Table." Off in the corner of their living room sat a card table with hundreds, sometimes thousands, of puzzle pieces scattered about. It was a permanent fixture, there for any and all to work on as they felt moved. Visiting relatives were invited to contribute to the effort. Neighbor kids helped out whenever they stopped by. Her dad always spent a few minutes on it in the morning as he finished his last few sips of coffee. And her mom loved to set aside Saturday morning as her "private time with the puzzle."
By age 4 or 5, Rachel wanted in on the action too, so she climbed up on a chair to see for herself what all the excitement was about. What struck her most in that first exposure were the dark and shadowy pieces. Most of the puzzle pieces were colorful and pretty, but scattered throughout were dark ones that reminded her of spiders or bugs, ugly and frightening. So she took it upon herself to remove them from her family's world. She gathered up a handful of these scary pieces and hid them safely away in the sofa cushions. She continued this mission of hers daily for the next couple weeks.
Needless to say, this puzzle took a surprisingly long time to put together. Eventually it became clear that the problem was the missing pieces. Her mother questioned Rachel, who quickly confessed. The scary pieces were rescued and her mother set about completing the puzzle.
What Rachel Remen says about that moment is important:
"As Mom added the hidden pieces, I was amazed," she writes. "I had been so busy hiding the scary pieces that I didn't notice a beautiful picture was taking shape."
Let me say that again:
"I was so busy hiding the scary pieces that I didn't notice that a beautiful picture was taking shape."
It's a line that makes you stop, forces you to think - makes you all of sudden unsure about what's scarier: the dark and painful pieces of our lives or the fact that so much of our lives is spent stuffing those dark and painful pieces into the corners of our emotional couches. And we are friends. And this is church. So it's okay to admit this morning that "couch stuffing" is indeed something that all of us do.
It's a truism to say that no one gets through life without experiencing pain. But the truism about which we don't like to talk is that none of us gets through life without slipping into the trap of trying to avoid our pain. As the wonderful Buddhist writer Pema Chodron says, "It does us no good to deny it. When pain comes, courage is never the human being's first instinct. What wells up and gets stronger is our well-rehearsed habits of avoidance and denial. There is a voice in each of us that whispers and promises: We can get around this."
And that's a hard voice to turn off, isn't it? Especially when so much of the culture around us is saying the same thing. Whether we're talking about depression and broken dreams or wrinkles and hair loss, our culture tells us daily that we can make it through life without loss and pain. Just read this book or apply this cream; it all can be avoided - guaranteed. If you don't believe me, just listen to this movie star who will tell you how it miraculously worked for her.
And it's not just the wrinkle cream pushers spreading this message; religion often contributes to the sales job as well. I'll never forget the sign in front of the New Age church in Syracuse, where I used to live. In big bold black letters it said, "PAIN IS A CHOICE."
We want that to be true, so badly. We try so hard to live that way. Holding the pain at bay. Not letting it sink in. Not letting it break us. These are the conscious or unconscious rules we so often live by, both as individuals and as a culture. I think of how we revered and still honor Jackie Kennedy and her response to President Kennedy's death, which has arguably become the model for our culture's response to suffering. Regardless of our age, we've all had Jackie Kennedy's stoicism held up to us as heroic, as what it means to deal with pain successfully, which basically boiled down to holding it at bay. During that time, like Jackie, we as a country were a rock - or so the story goes; we "held it together," we made it through undeterred, unbroken.
But here's the thing: What if being broken is actually a better way to be?
This question seems especially important for us to ask as religious people because over and over, in a whole host of ways, religion does this peculiar thing; it tells us to go ahead and invite the brokenness in.
The cross of Christianity.
The Jewish story of Job.
The Sufi's love songs welcoming pain into their homes.
The Buddha's constant encouragement to embrace life as suffering.
Each seems to say, each DARES to say, that somehow falling apart and being overwhelmed by loss is a good thing. Which, again, is peculiar, right? Almost offensive even. It simply makes no sense.
That is, unless your days have become filled with the task of trying to keep the pain out. Well then, all of a sudden, it's not such a nutty message, is it? It's a freeing message. Think again for a moment, about that frantic little girl, devoting her days to the task of trying to keep all the scary puzzle pieces off the table, out of sight. Think about how exhausting that must be. Think about all the energy and time she consumes keeping the scary stuff hidden. Think about all she is missing, all she is giving up. She's over there busy in the dark corners while everybody else is at the table enjoying the rest of the puzzle, enjoying the game. That's not living a pain-free life; that's living in a prison! And if you ask me what's peculiar, what doesn't make sense, it's that!!
This is what religion is trying to tell us when it says let yourself be broken, let yourself fall apart. It can sound like an odd masochistic celebration of pain, but it's really an attempt to say: Get the heck out of the dark! Get yourself out of that crazy prison you've walked yourself into! Stop trying to make life pain free and get over here and enjoy it, all of it!!
In other words, by asking us to surrender to pain and brokenness, religion is really trying to open up space for an entirely new game to emerge, an entirely new relationship to life to develop. Forget what you've been told about the possibility of controlling, eliminating or holding back pain and loss. That's a pipe dream, an illusion, a game that simply can't be won. The real challenge, the real struggle, is not wrestling with life as much as it is a matter of remaining open and receptive to it.
This different kind of "game," this different approach to life was movingly portrayed in a movie I watched the other night. It's not the kind of movie I would have expected to be spiritual but it was, nonetheless. The movie is called MurderBall, a documentary about, of all things, quadriplegic rugby. It features a cast of characters that at first blush seem not the least bit spiritually advanced. They are foul-mouthed, violent, obsessed in an adolescent way with sex and heavy drinking. And they are broken, irreparably broken. Their stories are full of loss - not just the loss of their arms and legs, but the loss of girlfriends, athletic scholarships to college, friends, mobility and independence.
But what each of them does have is MurderBall, this crazy sport invented in Canada that involves quadriplegic men doing battle with one another in wheelchairs transformed into one-man battering rams. The game is a version of rugby but it seems closer to demolition derby, with the armored wheelchairs slamming into each other, throwing players violently to the ground to open a path for the one with the ball to glide across the goal line. This crashing, bashing and crushing takes up a good amount of the film. So much so that, along with the cussing and guy talk, it's easy to overlook the way in which this is a model for an exceedingly spiritual and well-lived life.
In one scene, however, the spirituality is impossible to miss. The scene features Joe, one of the most severely debilitated players on the team. His arms and legs aren't impaired; they're gone! Joe and his teammates are visiting an elementary school to put on a demonstration of their sport. Afterward, the children go around and ask the players questions. As you can imagine, most of the questions aren't about the sport but about the players' handicaps.
The first question for Joe comes from a little girl. She walks up to him and, in that matter-of-fact way that kids have, asks, "How did you lose them? Your arms and legs?"
You can tell by his face that the question is a hard one. I imagine no matter how many times he's answered the question, it never gets easier. Joe looks down for a moment, as if to gather his strength. Then he looks up and right into the girl's eyes. Just as matter-of-factly as she asked her question, he says, "I got sick when I was 9 years old and contracted a rare blood disease that required the doctors to remove my arms and legs. But I'm all right. That's all that matters. I'm alive. And I'm using everything I do have to get through life. But that's what we all have to do, isn't it? Notice and use everything we have. Notice and use everything that's been given to us."
With a giant smile, he gives the girl a wink.
It's often said that pain and loss - at their best - make us tougher, harder, more thick-skinned. As that famous line of Nietzsche's puts it, "That which does not kill us makes us stronger." But after listening to Joe's response to the little girl, I no longer think that's quite right. Brokenness, it seems to me, made Joe if anything softer, more permeable, you might say, more flexible, more open, more able to accept whatever is in front of him as a means to live - and not just to live but, from the smile he was able to produce, to live joyfully.
Watching Joe slam into others with his souped-up wheelchair can leave the impression that he's been transformed into a fighter, but to listen closely to his words is to know that the true gift of his brokenness was not the ability to fight for every inch but the gentler and humbler ability to receive, enjoy and be grateful for, as he put it, whatever life decides to give us.
I know it's odd, hard and even dangerous to talk about being grateful for brokenness, but who of us here, in terms of our own losses and pain, hasn't emerged from them
a bit more humble,
a bit less greedy,
a bit less inclined to demand or expect life to give you everything just the way you want it,
a bit more able to appreciate and enjoy whatever it is that life decides to offer you?
And who of us here wouldn't say that this is indeed a better way to be?
Amen
AfterThoughts: Thoughts for Further Reflection
I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God.
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing;
..love and hope is in the waiting.
The darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
-- T.S. Eliot, East Coker, The Four QuartetsLiving never wore one out so much as the effort not to live.
-- Anais Nin"Despair...is the only cure for illusion. Without despair we cannot transfer our allegiance to reality - it's a kind of mourning period for our fantasies. Some people do not survive this despair, but no major change within a person can occur without it."
-- Philip Slater, EarthwalkYears ago, when I was rotten with virtue,
I believed loveliness
Was just a beautiful face, a flower,
No underside to it, no dark complication....
--Stephan Dunn
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