Pain

I don’t like pain. I don’t like it in any form, when I experience it myself, or when I see it in others. Most of us will go to considerable lengths to avoid pain.

The problem is, pain is not an optional part of the program. You don’t get to choose whether or not pain will penetrate your life experience. It goes with being human and being alive.

But truthfully, pain is not the problem. People can live with pain, many do with courage; it has not destroyed them.

What we cannot live with are the stories we tell ourselves about the pain we suffer. What really hurts are the little narratives we spin in our heads in an attempt to explain, or justify, or make sense of, or even to alleviate, our pain.

There are so many stories we create. “This should not be happening to me; I do not deserve to suffer.” “This is not fair.” “This is happening to me because I am bad; I deserve to suffer.” “My pain is your fault, the world’s fault, God’s fault.” “Someone should make this go away; make it stop.”

We hope if we can understand what is happening, the pain will ease.

But the stories never work, because the stories we use to try to deal with our pain find their origin in the common fallacy that pain is an unnatural part of life.

Our pain-stories begin to grow silent when we acknowledge that pain is nothing strange or alien. It is an integral part of what it means to be human.

When we stop telling stories about our pain, we discover that our pain has good work to do in our lives.

The proper work of pain is not, as we fear, to destroy us. The proper work of pain is to cause the cage we have built around our heart to break open. If we let it do its work, pain has the capacity to free us from the cages we build and to release the fragrance of gentleness and compassion.

When we resist pain’s work, we harden and condemn ourselves to being trapped on the surface of life. When we allow pain to do its work, we open, soften and deepen. Pain begins to uncover the richness and reality of life. When we accept our own pain and the pain of others, we discover the beauty that is the fullness of grace and abundance we have been given.

It takes faith and trust to embrace the pain that is ours. We cannot think our way towards this place of acceptance; we can only choose to act with the courage that sees clearly and accepts fully the reality of our lives as they come to us. This is the path through the inevitable pain we must at times all face.
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Hurt People Hurt People

No it is not a typo, and it is not meaningless repetition. It is in fact an answer to one of the most difficult questions I frequently ponder: Why do we so often hurt one another? Why are we so often mean, judgmental, negative, and critical?

There are probably many ways to answer these questions. But one answer is to say,

Hurt people hurt people.

When I am mean, critical, negative, and judgmental, it is because I am acting out of that place where I experience myself as having been hurt. I attack because I feel vulnerable. I criticize in an attempt to rebuild my faltering sense of self. I judge others because I have already judged myself and found myself lacking.

Hurt people hurt people.

So how does this idea help me in relationship to people who hurt me, or in relationship to myself when I feel hurt?

When I can look at a person who hurts me as a hurt person, it is easier to extend towards that person the compassion that has the capacity to set us both free. When I see that my hurtful behaviour comes from my own experience of pain, I find compassion for myself.

To be compassionate means being willing to look clearly at myself and at others. When I see clearly, I see that we are all hurt. We are all broken; and the sharp edges of our brokenness will always clash until we acknowledge the wounds that cause us to hurt and to be hurt.

When I feel attacked, I need to understand that my attacker is acting out of their own insecurity, fear, anxiety, and hurt. This is not a bad person, not even a cruel person. This is a hurt person, a fearful person, a sad person who is unwilling, or unable to bear their own sadness and therefore feels compelled to attempt to inflict it upon others.

When I have deeply accepted my own wounds, the wounds others attempt to inflict upon me, lose their power. I no longer need to pass on my pain, or to be overwhelmed by the pain of others. I am free to live from a place of strength.
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Broken

Bob Dylan once sang,

Broken lines broken strings
Broken threads broken springs
Broken idols broken heads
People sleeping in broken beds
Ain't no use jiving
Ain't no use joking
Everything is broken.

As a priest, I stand Sunday by Sunday before a worshiping community and I break a piece of bread. It strikes me as a deeply profound and important gesture. "Everything is broken."


There are times when I am almost overwhelmed by the brokenness of life. There are so many things that do not work very well. I do not know any communities or institutions that run along smoothly without encountering tension along the way. Businesses falter; the economy seems to be in danger of sinking beneath the surface; social problems grow more acute every year; governments struggle to govern; churches flounder. We are not getting better and better as the years go by. Institutions don't work very well because institutions are made up of broken people.

I get to hear a lot of stories of peoples' lives. Many of the stories I hear are filled with pain and struggle. I see people who feel completely bewildered by the circumstances in which they find themselves. I see so much tragedy and suffering without even needing to leave the comfortable suburban confines of my little parish. I wonder sometimes how people manage to keep going.

The pain I see may not be the pain of fearing for your life of those who live in a wartorn country or those who face the bleak daily struggle to find enough food to sustain a family. I do not see the grinding poverty of the truly poor. But the pain and the brokenness I see are no less real.

What do I have to offer this broken world as I stand at the table of the Lord breaking bread to share among broken people?

I wish I was Jesus with the power to heal all the brokennes I see. But even Jesus left more unhealed than he made well. Even Jesus left in tact the injustice of Roman rule over his people and the awful religious oppression of his day. Surely Jesus could have done more. Surely Jesus could have taken all the brokenness and made it better. He left so much undone, so much unfinished buisness. What was he thinking?

Jesus knew something I sometimes forget. Jesus knew he did not come to establish a visible, tangible physical kingdom here on earth. Jesus said, "The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed." (Luke 17:20) Rather Jesus came to establish a kingdom within the hearts of those who opened to him, "in fact, the kingdom of God is within you." (Luke 17:21b)

All the brokenness, all the pain and the suffering of this earthly existence call us to open to a deeper reality within ourselves. The tragedies we experience summon us to recognize that God lives within us and that our ultimate peace and contentment lie, not in orchestrating the circumstance of life to work the way we wish they might, but in resting and trusting in the unchanging mercy and grace of God at work within our lives.

We cannot fix all the brokenness of life. We can only offer it back to God, surrendering our own wills and trusting in God's love. When we enter into this transaction with God, we will find that our lives become instruments of healing even within the terrible brokenness of life. We act, not in order to fix anything, but because the love that we discover when we surrender to God's mercy, compels us to be instruments of restoration. And so the world is a little bit more healed when our hearts open and embrace the loving mercy of Christ.

This is the hope I offer every time I stand at the table and break bread to share with broken people. There is hope within our hearts, because we do not face the brokenness of life alone. God is with us; God is in us. We are filled with the light, mercy, truth and grace of Christ that triumphs over all the pain and suffering we might ever confront. We are instruments of light when we surrender to the Goodness that sustians the universe and that dwells in the depths of our being.
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