Faces of Suffering

We are called to be both the agony and ecstasy of God for the health and wellbeing of the world; to accept and to somehow participate in the mystery of death and resurrection deep in one’s own soul and in the life of the universe. Reading and trying to interiorise some of these wise reflections brings healing for someone like me just now. That is, on those occasions when they break through the negative thoughts that seem to be my current default mode. They attach, reveal and unfold a hugely significant reason and meaning in what might too often be received and regarded as an arbitrary, useless and evil visitation.

My sense of somehow belonging to the Earth, of being the child of the Great Spirit, of carrying a responsibility for the health of a universe that is the body of God, affects me now in unexpected ways. Somehow I am responsible to everyone for everything, as Fyodor Dostoyevsky put it. For all of this to be happening to me I must try to understand so much more about the fragility, vulnerability and ambiguity of our evolving world. Social psychologist Diarmuid O’Murchu takes us deeper into the mystery when he writes that ‘creation cannot survive, and less so thrive, without its dark side. There is a quality of destruction, decay and death that is essential to creation’s flourishing. . . And the consequence of this destructive dimension is what we call evil, pain and suffering.’⁵⁵ And it is all paradox writ large. We must first come to terms with the unfolding cycle of birth-death-rebirth, which is patterned all over creation from the tiniest atom to the expanding cosmos.

In recent decades, I’ve become aware, you may have noticed, that in any meditation or contemplation about God (or whatever name you may wish to use for the Great Spirit of Life, the Mystery of Being, our Eternal Lover), the whole New Universe Story, the daily discoveries of physicists and scientists, the revelations of the central place played by Evolution, have to be at the centre of all our musings. It will take time, but already our theologians and spiritual writers are so excited at the way our understanding of God and Creation is being transformed by these new, powerful, mysterious scientific revelations. In my current daily temptations to give in to despairing tears, I continue to find light and lift in this vague understanding of my perceived and necessary participation in the rising-dying-rising of an evolving world. My suffering plays a central part in the evolving of our broken earth and of my own broken evolving body; both bodies being the precious, the beloved and the one, broken body of God.

Something else struck me a few days ago. I never once believed that God in any way sends us anything but true and good life, as pain-free and abundant as can be. Saddled with the image of an all-powerful, all-knowing, controlling, male God we had no way of dealing with the reality of suffering except by pushing some highly damaging devotional teaching about God sending us crosses during our lives to test us, to teach us a lesson, to purify us from original sin, to show us who’s boss. Because of my certainty regarding my own fallible mother’s love for me, I never understood how the most loving ‘Person’ ever, could deliberately allow pain or even inflict torture on young and old, to examine and check out our love for our Creator. Imagine your mother sticking pins into you when you were small just to make sure that you loved her!

In spite of all the reflections in this section about the grace hidden within suffering, there persists a poisonous indoctrination that needs repeated reassurance for God’s (all) people that suffering is never a punishment for sin. This terrible and destructive spiritual teaching has destroyed a key element of the Christian faith. Again, as we have already touched on and arising from a thoroughly flawed doctrine of original sin, we have believed that God literally and historically turfed a non-existent Adam and Eve out of a non-existent garden, having been seduced by a non-existent, multilingual snake. When our Church’s theological clean-up takes place we will be horrified at how gullible and naïve we all have been in believing such love-destroying fallacies. (Please check out the beautiful meaning of the Adam and Eve myth, with its revelation about humanity’s attraction to what is dark and evil; but also humanity’s openness to the bright light of divinity that will always outshine the deadly shadows that also live within us.) The deadly theory of making daily and lifelong reparation to a very dissatisfied and angry God because of our ‘first parents’ original sin’ has never entered my thoughts about my current situation. I beg of you, dear reader, please, in the name of a love that is sublime, supreme and so intimate, that is as tender and passionate and personal as you have ever encountered, do not let those destructive thoughts, even for one second, ever influence your heart.