Blisters and Scars

For thoughtful, conscious life, we may imagine all creation as being precariously contained in a mended cup of meaning. It is the cup from which we drink our lives -- the cup with which we drink to life. It is a cup which is broken and mended, broken and mended, over and over again. Each time an era passes, a way of life is destroyed, or someone of significance to us dies, we discover that our cup is broken. Yet, somehow -- together -- we must find, we do find the way to mend it all over again.
 
An open-minded and realistic look at affliction and how we cope with it, what we learn. Loss and trauma break our cup of meaning. How do we go about mending it?
 
Dreck on the internet — teaching that making meaning in our lives is a matter of how we look at things — websites for motivational speakers and spirituality gurus
a lot of stuff written by people who seem never to have had to deal with real setbacks in their lives — Pearl image, adding layers of self to protect from an irritant — who almost make us feel guilty because we are in pain — smacks of easy grace to me, comfort without testing
 
contrast with Harvey Pekar's "I can't do this, I'm not strong enough." when he discovers that he has cancer.
 
Compare examples of affliction in Scripture: the affliction of Joseph, sold into slavery by his brothers, then thrown in prison; Japhthah sacrificing his daughter to God because of a thoughtless oath; Naomi losing her husband and both her sons in a foreign land; the lepers who were outcasts from society, to whom no one would talk, whom no one would touch; the woman taken in adultery, whose sweetness turned quickly to gall; the traveler beaten and left for dead beside the road to Jericho; the prophet and the thieves crucified on Golgotha — these people knew affliction; they knew loss; they knew pain. Would any of them, I wonder, think of what they went through as the creation of a pearl?
 
Granted, most of what we experience in life is like the stuff that marks the sharks and whales at aquarium — covered with scars and scrapes — each a souvenir of some misadventure
 
examples from our own lives: low performance on a test, a minor traffic infraction, burning the toast, making a gaff on email, misplacing important papers, losing keys, forgetting appointments — this is all stuff I know about first hand — they're all sore spots, minor scars, little reminders of mortality and finitude. Reminders of "Dr. Scholls moments" — blisters on the heels of life
 
By blisters, I mean that they cause momentary discomfort, we respond with blister pads of a sort, becoming a little more careful, and little more thoughtful, a little more disciplined. We apologize to ourselves and to those we have hurt, and in a few hours or a few days we are over it. And our skin grows back a little tougher than before. Parenthetically, that toughness becomes a problem — what nature has devised to protect the skin proves an encumbrance when we allow our souls to become calloused.
 
Continuum of affliction — the easy stuff, that we shrug off and say, "that's life;" the harder stuff that leaves scars, that makes us pause, reconsider, maybe change direction; and the really hard stuff that cripples us so badly that we have to let go of our previous identity and reinvent ourselves as a completely new being — if we survive, for some of these episodes can kill our souls, even if they don't kill our bodies.
 
More severe experiences of adversity, the ones that scar us and make us reshape our lives, are things like divorce, losing of a spouse or a child, learning that we have some form of cancer or learning that someone we love has Alzheimer's, losing a job, or being victim of a violent crime. These can be very painful, may feel devastating at the time. But they are survivable, as evidenced by those of us who have been there and come through.
 
Most of us have dealt with something like these. We've gone through being stunned (I've spoken before of coming close to having four traffic accidents the day I was diagnosed with cancer), we've gone through being angry, pretending that nothing has really changed, grieving for what we have lost, and somehow finding the strength to carry on and reconstitute our worlds.
 
Not to say that the transition is easy. We have to do the work, we have to learn how to take care of ourselves, we have to learn language that allows us to come to terms with our experience, we have to accept our vulnerability. We have to learn that we are not in control of our lives. And we have to give ourselves time. And throughout all that learning, we hurt.
 
And the hurting never stops. It may attenuate, but it is always a part of our lives, present at some level in everything we do.
In spite of the pain, we may discover a calling — Wounded Healer — we discover a sensitivity to the pain and loss of others; or we decide to do whatever we can to make sure others don't have to experience what we have gone through — become advocates for cancer research, leading support groups for the newly divorced, or the newly diagnosed, volunteering for the rape or the suicide hotline, serving on boards and volunteering at homes and hospitals — we discover or we create a ministry based on our experience of loss — we create meaning out of affliction. And having found that meaning, we may look back and say that because of who we have become, we would not change what we have lived through — most of us would choose our lives again if given the chance.
 
Up to this point, I can speak from my own experience — I've gone through a few of these — but now I turn to losses I have only observed rather than experienced, and frankly few of them. So I turn to the thought of others — I will even quote a philosopher — seeking authority from someone else when my own experience lacks depth
 
More severe losses can leave us with very little to grasp. An accident that leaves us quadriplegic, being held as a prisoner of war for several years, having a debilitating disease like AIDS or MS, becoming isolated because we have lost our hearing or our sight or our language, having a stroke that leaves us partially paralyzed. These experiences can be such a severe blow to our understanding of ourselves that we may lose all sense of meaning in our lives.
 
For a certainty, we lose our identity. Our cup of meaning is broken, broken, broken.
 
In her essay "The Love of God and Affliction," the French philosopher, Simone Weil, wrote of the annihilating effect affliction has on ordinary mortals, most of whom sink under its weight. Affliction is "an uprooting of life ... made irresistibly present to the soul by the attack or immediate apprehension of physical pain." Affliction attacks a life "in all its parts, social, psychological and physical."
 
That's the point to remember: the physical loss is accompanied by an emotional and a cognitive loss that can utterly subdue us. We may never recover — may become bitter, despondent, eternally angry. We may reject all efforts to help us, or we may become endlessly demanding, which is another way of pushing people away. We may take our own lives. We may hold an undying grudge against life for what it has cost us. This I have seen, in many forms. I have never known how to minister to someone on such a path, other than to offer the gift of my attention. It's an interesting transaction, if you think of it as such — a minister, a spiritual healer, has to relinquish ego and control in order to help someone whose ego has been smashed, who has lost control of her life. The only helpful gift seems to be the willingness to be attentive.
 
In Weil's view, those who survive affliction do so by admitting God into their souls and grafting a new life onto their old, shattered one. In that way, they are born anew.
 
(Now, Weil was a mystic, one who was very comfortable with god language and religious symbolism — and inebriated with holiness — but I find truth in what she says)
 
So, let me put her idea in terms that make sense to me: in severe affliction, we learn how utterly dependent we are, how vulnerable. Our defenses didn't work. Our thick skin only made us inflexible. Our skills and our knowledge and all our plans are suddenly irrelevant. We appreciate for the first time the complex web of support that holds us, because we have to relearn it one strand at a time. And I think we learn that there is still some part of us that is able to say, good-bye to all that, this is who I am now. This is how I must learn to live. This is the vessel that must hold my joy. This is the new me. In time, having nothing else to give but the gift of being willing to be attentive, we may even get to a place where we are able to say, thank you.
 
As Rumi puts it, we may find that we are able to greet each new guest in our life, each loss and affliction, as a guide from beyond —
 
and this I have seen, especially among people who have figured out how to have a good death — they have discovered their guide or at least their way. It's always a profound experience and therefore a religious experience — they have found a way through loss to affirmation, even as they are letting go of life. It's a great gift to those who are left behind.
 
I think there is more to say about Weil's idea about admitting God into our souls. So let me draw on personal experience: there have been times in my life when what has gotten me through, what has given meaning in the midst of affliction, has been my ability to draw on that part of me that generates love, that responds to what was happening in my world with love. What a discovery, that love was something I could create, that it could fill me with joy, that it was there for me to tap when I remembered to do so. For me, that's what it means to admit God into my soul.
 
But lest I be accused of creating a pearl here, let me hasten to add that when I speak of joy, is speak of an experience of rending ego boundaries and layers of self-protection. It hurts like hell and is very disorienting at the same time that it feels ever so right, ever so fulfilling. This is not Hallmark joy. It's the painful joy of being reborn. The process involves a lot of tearing.
 
Of course our ability to "admit God into our souls," or to tap the generative power of love within us, is not something that has to await times of affliction. The way we die is the way we live. We can start to learn the necessary dispositions right now. It's never too early.
 
Which is why I love to read Mary Oliver. I learn from her constantly. I want so much to live the lesson she teaches us in her poem about the mockingbirds: Wherever it was/I was supposed to be/this morning—/whatever it was I said/I would be doing—/I am standing/at the edge of the field—/I am hurrying/through my own soul,/opening its dark doors—/I am leaning out;/I am listening. — I am leaning out; I am listening. From wherever life takes me, I hope that always I will find it in myself to lean out and listen expectantly, to give the willing gift of my attention, to open my door to the strangers who may be gods in disguise, who may be guides from beyond.
 
Glory Hallelujah!