Incomprehensible Suffering Requires Compassion More Than Answers

I am often saddened by Christian’s response to suffering. In today’s blog, I am taking a short detour from our work with Parker Palmer. Brian McLaren's compassionate and sound response to John Piper’s position on the tragedy in Japan compels me to speak up.

It's a lengthy read but an important conversation. Graciously, McLaren brings heart and truth to what some call God’s judgment. My prayers go out to the ten's of thousands who are hurting and afraid in Japan.

Brian McLaren's reponse to tragedy in Japan

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"I Sat Down Because I Was Tired"

Legend has it that years after Rosa Parks became the “first lady of civil rights” a graduate student came to Ms. Parks and asked, ‘Why did you sit down at the front of the bus that day?’ Rosa Parks did not say that she sat down to launch a movement, because her motives were more elementary than that. She said, ‘I sat down because I was tired.’ But she did not mean her feet were tired. She meant that her soul was tired, her heart was tired, her whole being was tired… She decided, ‘I will no longer act on the outside in a way that contradicts the truth that I hold deeply on the inside.’

Where does one get the courage to “sit down at the front of the bus” in a society that punishes anyone who decides to live divided no more. People like Rosa Parks have transformed the notion of punishment itself. They have come to understand that no punishment anyone might inflict on them could possibly be worse than the punishment they inflict on themselves by conspiring in their own diminishment.” Parker Palmer

As we continue our journey with Parker Palmer in “Let Your Life Speak,” Palmer reminds me of the voice within that is continually calling me to radical honesty and radical trust. To bring his point to light, he retells the story of Rosa Parks monumental decision to take a seat at the front of the bus.

As I sit in her shadow, I pray for the courage to keep “sitting down.” My illusions tell me I will have a better life if I go with the status quo and keep trying to win the blessing of people that will honor me with their stamp of approval. After all, that’s how I’ve lived for the last fifty-five years. But at what cost?

So many of us have spent most of our life coming to understand who we really are. I pray for younger followers in the faith to find the courage to live an undivided life. I pray that our kids will really like who they are rather than disowning themselves to be who we think they should be. People complain about younger generations and their disregard for truth. I hope I live to see the “church” filled with people who are living the truth of who they are rather than being bound in a prison of judgment and fear.

I know of no greater example than that of Jesus who never gave in to what others wanted him to be. The religious establishment had their own idea of what their Messiah would look like but it was far from the truth of God’s extravagant love. Jesus, being true to who He was and what He came to do, took a stand that led to the ultimate “punishment”… but my, he launched much more than a movement.




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My True Self

Brennan Manning says, “Be who you is cause if you ain’t who you is, you is who you ain’t. That power packed sentence is what I call my homework for life. We are all born with a unique personality and different gifts. Most importantly, we are blessed with the possibility of claiming our true identity based on God’s image of us. It has taken me 40 years of being a Christ follower to accept and rest in my true self. I found that without seeing myself through the truth and grace of God, I am constantly striving to become what my ego is telling everyone else I am. When that image takes a deadly fall, I am left to look up from the ground and offer God a needy little girl (well, perhaps I should say, “old woman.)” It is at that very moment that I begin to see my true self and find peace in who I am and who I am not. I find that I am regularly tempted to prop myself back up based on images built through my own ego or other’s perception of what they want me to be. So today I have a choice to listen to my ego, driven by fear or to listen to the truth in my heart, which is rooted in God’s love.

To continue our inspiration from Parker Palmer, he says it this way…

Today I understand vocation (life) quite differently – not as a goal to be achieved but as a gift to be received. Vocation (life) does not come from a voice “out there” calling me to be something I am not. It comes from a voice “in here” calling me to the person I was born to be, to fulfill the original selfhood given me at birth by God

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Denying the truth about who I am and who God is causes great pain. At an early age, we are taught to live a life of self protection and self promotion in order to receive the love we crave. Once we are willing to drop our illusion that these strategies will give us what we long for, we can begin the journey to freedom.

Parker Palmer in “Let Your Life Speak”…

"True self, when violated, will always resist us, sometimes at great cost, holding our lives in check until we honor its truth. I must listen to my life and try to understand what it is truly about – quite apart from what I would like it to be about – or my life will never represent anything real in the world, no matter how earnest my intentions.”

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I’ve been shadowboxing with my recurring doubt about where I am going, where I’ve been and what my future will look like? Today my life is better than ever, but the doubts will always be waiting for a turn to distract me from my true self. Earlier in the week, I went back to a book that I read in 2004 at a silent retreat. It’s a little book with a big message. This book plummeted me into facing different truths about my life and I began a long journey of change. The voice of truth will forever be calling to my inner soul. I must attend to its cry. This means putting on humility and living each day with gratitude for new life - which begins again with each breath I take.

I would love to share little tidbits of this book with you in the next week of so. Perhaps there is more to your life than the life you are living.

The book is Let Your Life Speak by Parker Palmer. http://www.amazon.com/Let-Your-Life-Speak-Listening/dp/0787947350

“By all Appearances things were going well, but the soul does not put much stock in appearances. Seeking a path more purposeful than accumulating wealth, holding power, winning at competition, or securing a career, I had started to understand that it is indeed possible to live a life other than one’s own. Fearful that I was doing just that - but uncertain about the deeper, truer life I sensed hidden inside me, uncertain whether it was real or trustworthy or within reach – I would snap awake in the middle of the night and stare for long hours at the ceiling…

So I lined up the loftiest ideals I could find and set out to achieve them. But always they were unreal, a distortion of my true self – as must be the case when one lives from the outside in, not the inside out. I had simply found a “noble” way to live a life that was not my own, a life spent imitating heroes instead of listening to my heart.

”

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Fall... The Beauty of Letting Go

Praying for Release

Autumn, urge me to drop every leaf I don't need -
every task of habit I repeat past its season,
every sorrow I rehearse,
each unfulfilled hope I recall,
every person or possession to which I cling -
until my branches are bare,
until I hold fast to nothing.

Blow me about in your wild iron sky,
crush all that's puffed up,
fluff all that in me needs to go to seed,
send my shadows to sleep.

Tutor me through straining night winds
in the passion of moan and pant,
the gift of letting go at the moment of most abundance-
in the way of falling apples, figs, maple leaves, pecans.

Open my eyes to your languid light,
let me stare in your face
until I see no difference between soar and fall,
until I recognize eternity in single breaths,
faint whispers of cool air through lungs.

Show me the way of dying in glorious boldness -
Yellow, gold orange, rust, red burgundy, brown.

Exultation, a Poem Cycle in
Celebration of the Seasons
by Monza Naff
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Cancer, Death and the Daunting Question, Why?

Judy Moss died this morning at 8:00 am. I wrote my thoughts down last week after visiting her in ICU but didn’t get them in my blog before she died. My words are inadequate but I pray you will get a glimpse of this generous, gracious woman who loved well. As I reflect upon her life and her death she remains a wounded healer.

My friend Judy is dying of cancer. I met Judy after her children, Mike Moss (B9) and Liz Moss (B23) went through Barnabas. Immediately, I found her to be kind and accepting. Theologically, she is probably more conservative than I am but she has accepted me with enduring grace and unconditional love. Though we never spent much time together, when I was diagnosed with cancer last year, I received a card from her with a check in it to help with my medical bills. When I began treatments she sent a wooden cross to me to hold during chemo. When her daughter Liz came by to check on me during my illness she told me that her Mom wanted to know how I was feeling and how my family, particularly Ricardo, was holding up through my illness. Judy was doing all this while fighting her own battle as cancer was spreading throughout her body.

Watching her journey over the last few years and seeing the torment she is now enduring ignites anger in me which asks, “So what are you doing now Lord?????” Clearly in my humanity I cannot understand how God interacts with such evil tragedies like death by cancer. Seeing her in ICU today it's hard to believe she is still alive with so little left of her physical body. Yet her spirit is clearly alive and her countenance is the same as it was before she got sick: kind, humble, thoughtful and full of faith. Many would say that the Spirit of God is always evident in her presence.

Too often Christians comfort themselves or others with beliefs such as, “God has a purpose which will be revealed later” or “this must be God’s will.” I don’t buy it. Surely the creator of the universe and the lover of our souls doesn’t sit on a throne as a parent unmoved by His children’s pain. Surely our God of grace doesn’t roam the earth deciding what illness or tragedy should be assigned to certain families. I’m not willing to get into a theological argument about what God planned or even foreknew. No one can answer the overwhelming question of “why?” If they try, they haven’t suffered.

So what is true in all of this? What is God doing? He is present. And that presence fills the room with peace. His presence lifts my heart out of the questions and calms me. God’s presence is tangible as He waits for Judy to be ready. When that time comes, the absence of her Spirit in the room will be deafening. Our memories will return to life before cancer and we will be comforted by the life she lived. Her family will grieve deeply because of her physical absence but will be grateful her suffering is over.

For now, those of us who stand by them can offer our presence and that will be enough.
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