Several years ago, I was suffering with debilitating pain in my arms and hands. It was a result of all the time I spent on the computer working on a book I was writing and other academic work. This pain was exacerbated by guitar playing, and I got to the point when I could neither type or play music in my band. It felt frustrated and depressed because I had a deadline on my book, and I couldn't work and might have lost my contract. Music -- which was normally my salvation -- was out of reach. In the background of my life, I was also suffering from the loneliness of living alone and from several losses I avoided thinking about. I had conversations with God that went something like, "God, you gave me this work to do, and it's work I love, but now I can't complete it. This is not fair! Help me to understand why you giveth and taketh away."
God seemed particularly silent, so I decided to call a friend, Andre Delbecq, who had been through much suffering. Despite his difficulties, Andre exuded a sense of peace and equanimity. A couple of months before, Andre had been on an airplane, flying to join us as a keynote speaker at an academic conference. While on the flight, he had a heart incident, and the plane was diverted to the nearest airport so he could be rushed to the hospital. They performed a successful surgery on his heart and sent him home to California to recover.
Like me, Andre felt a real sense of sacred calling about his work, and I assumed he shared my same frustration about not being able to fulfill that calling.
But that was not the case. Andre embraced suffering as a gift from God. He told me he believed suffering is an integral part of the spiritual journey. We can resist it and rail against it, but that only keeps us blocked on our spiritual path. He told me that wise people had guided him to understand the only way to deal with suffering is to accept that suffering is -- it just is. We are human, and suffering is a part of life. He gave me articles to read that advised those who are suffering to stay in touch with their feelings and not to deny them or stuff them down.
Andre also shared with me the pain he experienced from losing his major donor of the spiritual leadership center he ran at his university and the pain of the lack of support from his administration. Then he shared that he had recently lost his son to an alcohol overdose, who died on the side of a highway interchange. Andre had done everything he knew to help his son get clean, but he felt he had failed. Despite all these very difficult and painful situations, Andre truly believed there was a reason for things that he could not understand. His faith grew deeper.
The enormity of his losses opened my heart, and I shared some of my losses, too. My brother had recently died from an alcohol overdose, three weeks before he was scheduled to go to a treatment center to get clean. Both of my parents had died of alcoholism not too long before that.
Something happened for me as Andre and I shared our suffering. The pain of my suffering felt more pronounced and intense, but the comfort in being able to talk with someone who was also walking this path eased the darkness of the suffering. I was not alone, and the sharing of our losses, our grief and our pain created a deep bond. That was a gift I will always treasure, especially because Andre passed away unexpectedly last year. I always will remember his unshakable faith in the midst of the darkness, and he carried that right up until the end. That kind of faith is contagious, and it helped me immensely.
St. John of the Cross, a 16th century Spanish monk and mystic, wrote a poem titled "Dark Night of the Soul." This poem narrates the journey of the soul to mystical union with God through the stages of purgation (cleansing), illumination and then union with the divine. As difficult as it is, suffering brings with it a kind of cleansing -- a letting go of that which is less important -- and a laser-like focus on the suffering itself. This letting go (in my case my attachment to work and deadlines, as well as the letting go of the facade that I am not affected by grief), opens the space for the light, the illumination, to come in.
I experienced a new, more vulnerable and open sense of myself because of the experience with Andre as we shared our suffering. It was like letting the genie out of the bottle. For years, I had tried to portray a sense of strength and invincibility and had built a shell around myself. With Andre, that shell cracked, and the light could stream in to my more authentic self.
We are entering the holiday season during which almost every major religious tradition has a holy day. Our fantasy is that this is a happy time of year when families come together to celebrate. The reality is that many people are quietly suffering, and the holidays can make this suffering more unbearable. As you are with friends, acquaintances and loved ones these next few weeks, be aware it might not be a Hallmark time of year for them and be prepared to just be present for them if needed -- without trying to "fix" anything. And if it is you who are suffering, know it helps to find a trusted friend who can listen deeply to your feelings and just be there with you. It doesn't lessen the suffering, but it helps to not feel so alone.
NAN Religion on 12/09/2017