Cry of the Heart (page 4)

 As a striving towards transcendence, creative suffering – as we've seen expressed in Germain Greer's anguished words – opens us to others who are also suffering, thus creating a solidarity among those who suffer. To suffer together means to walk together towards transcendence. This solidarity is the proper human response to suffering... What we share is the questioning – and thus we suffer with the one who suffers. We co-suffer with that person.
    Since suffering reflects the transcendence of the human person, since it points to a Mystery that is the author of the drama of human life, then we cannot really use suffering to deny the existence of God. Instead, it is because there is a God that suffering exists as human being experience it. The suffering of human beings is a sign of God. (Page 4 - top of page 5)

I have noticed, since I've gotten sick again, that certain friends have faded away. I simply haven't heard from them since I communicated the recurrence of my cancer. I think I understand them – they're deeply disturbed and terrified of losing me. Their love for me makes them feel that my loss would be an awful thing, something they can't bear. To be near me, to see me suffer, would only intensify this sense of horror and loss, and it's something they instinctively recoil from. I think this is the human condition without redemption. Extreme suffering is simply impossible to witness, especially in one we love. So I can't blame those who don't have the stamina or stomach to stay in touch with me. They have no intention of making me feel lonely or abandoned. In fact, I think it breaks their hearts and makes them feel horrible that they keep "forgetting" to reach out. 

To hang in there with the suffering person – especially, to hang in there without offering "answers" or solutions – is impossible without a special, divine gift (a grace). Those who can do it should take no credit for their capacity because the strength doesn't come from them. Only God can make this co-suffering possible. 

This solidarity that Albacete speaks of is a real thing. Going to the hospital, I would feel the weight of it. Sitting in the little waiting area (it held 10 chairs in a U shape) right outside the radiation rooms, we patients would always strike up conversations. Cancer is so democratic – it strikes all types, from every walk of life – but there we'd be, brought together by this one enemy, and there would be an immediate intimacy. These people would share their hopes and fears, their pain and their relief – all sometimes within a five minute conversation. These conversations, no matter how short or long, would always end, as one person would be led back to the radiation machines, with "I'll pray for you," or "God bless you." Always. I don't know what religion the others were, and I was not always the one to invoke the Almighty. Their are no atheists when it comes to cancer. At least, I never met one. 

So walking in the big hospital (visitors always remark that it's the size of a city), one feels the weight of all the suffering people, especially the children. This is a weight that is impossible for the strong and healthy to discern. It's there, like a cloud, hanging over the shoulders and head of every person who enters and leaves, but only one in real pain, or suffering a big loss, can feel it bearing down on her. And it's a welcome weight, like a weighted blanket. We are part of something greater than we are. We are not alone. And this is, indeed, a sign of God. 

 

Contribution to SoC (RS pages 60-62)

A gift from a stranger, who had heard about my cancer from my brother-in-law and brought this back from Lourdes for me... For me! 

"... in one way or another, these stances are either temptations, or actual attitudes all of us live" (60). 

Let's all be very disciplined and look only to ourselves and our own consciences when testing Giussani's "unreasonable positions." We all know OTHER people who are getting it wrong, but to focus on them would mean a lost opportunity for us. 

Theoretical Denial of the Questions: 

This is when we treat the great questions ("Why am I here? What is the meaning of my life? Why is there something and not nothing? etc.) as absurd. 

I don't do this consciously, but often, without thinking about it, I leave the great questions off the table as "extraneous" to a given problem to solve. 

The big "problem" I face now is my recovery from radiation/chemo. The symptoms need to be managed – with medicine, therapies, devices, various practices – it's easy to turn all these problems into complex calculations, endless adjustments, the need for some new product that will solve everything... Each day I put my little wood statue of Our Lady of Lourdes in my front left pocket where I can easily reach for it and hold it in my hand... But even this can become a kind of "practical solution" rather than an opening up of awareness or a reminder of the Big Questions and my need to keep them in play. 

What happens, though, when I allow these questions to frame and define my symptoms and the misery I experience? What difference does it make when my little statue of Our Lady becomes a source of ultimate meaning (and not just a comforting gesture, made with less awareness)?

As I placed the small piece of wood in my pocket this morning, a kind of song or prayer rose spontaneously in my heart: O my Jesus, my beloved. I love you. I'm yours. from the bottoms of my feet to the top of my head, I give it all to you because you're my Jesus, my all. How I love you. How I want to be your beloved, forever and always. Only this... The song continued with many repetitions/different words but the same basic meaning. I didn't consciously choose to pray this way; I didn't even say, "Now it's time to pray." Nothing like that. Rather, it was something that welled up from my heart, as a gift to me. I asked myself, "Where could such a gift come from?" and the only reasonable answer is that the gift comes directly from the misery, the pain, and the odious symptoms I work so hard to stamp out. How many times while leaning over a sink or a toilet, or while sitting up in bed when all I wanted to do was to lie down, did I find myself spontaneously begging: O my Jesus, deliver me, take this away, please, Jesus, my Jesus, please...But if you cannot take it away, please be with me, please stay with me. Please... And these occasions laid down a kind of pattern or habit of invocation and of turning my face in the direction of Christ. 

"I would create the universe again, just to hear you say again that you love me" [Christ to St. Teresa of Avila]. 

If I ask, "What is the meaning of this pain I experience? Why does God allow me to suffer with these symptoms?" then the only adequate response is: for my need to expand and for my love for the Mystery to become the habitual attitude of my heart. These experiences are so much more satisfying than all my calculations, adjustments, researching solutions. And yet God also wants me to do this work of calculating, adjusting, and researching! He gave me this desire, too, because to want wholeness and integrity of the body is also an elementary need. In God's economy, nothing is ever wasted or lost.