The past week has been calmer for me personally. I am grateful for that.
It's dawning on me now more that ever that I am really not very good at life. During my lectio yesterday morning, for which I am using Laurence Devillairs' The Philosophy Cure: Lessons on Living from the Philosophers, I contemplated matter of suffering.
I have to say, in my life most of the suffering I've endured is of my own making. And that in the big scheme of things, I have not suffered much. Nonetheless, whatever form it takes, suffering is, well, suffering. It's an unavoidable part of being human.
It has also become very clear that I have a hard time being light-hearted and just letting myself be free. It's as if I need a burden to carry, a worry to tarry. While I regret the self-absorption that depressive suffering sucks me into, I don't regret any compassion I've ever shown to anyone. Helping other people carry their burdens is something of a vocation for me. Though, these days, ministry doesn't afford much by way of this.
Something Saint Paul wrote in his Second Letter to the Corinthians has slowly become my favorite scripture passage:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God (1 Cor. 1:3-4, NASB)It just so happens that this particular passage serves as the scriptural reading for Sunday, Evening Prayer II, Week I of the Psalter.
Here's what I wrote in response what I read yesterday- bear in mind these are just notes: "Suffering: a good topic for martyr's memorial [yesterday was the Memorial of St. Paul Miki & Companions, Martyrs]. Descartes philosophy was not disembodied. His whole philosophy is usually reduced to one Meditation [really, Part 1 of Meditation II in Meditations of First Philosophy]. Optimism is not hope. Hope is the cross. Optimism is denial or avoidance of the cross. God is not cruel. Hesed as lovingkindness."
Descartes' Meditation VI in his best know work, as DeVillairs reminded me, "contains another foundational experience of the self - one that is mediated by suffering." This resonates with me. I never feel more alone than when I am suffering. When suffering, I never feel more by myself and, hence, never feel more myself. Empathy helps me. I find some consolation in someone who was been through something akin to what I am experiencing sharing their own ordeal with me. Sympathy can be nice, too, as long as it doesn't become prescriptive and pietistic.
Here's what I wrote as a kind of resolution for the day yesterday: "Enjoy today- be lighthearted." Easy, right?
In reality, my life is good and I shouldn't complain, but sometimes I do. Sometimes I often complain. In his autobiography, G.K. Chesterton wrote: "I hope it is not pompous to call the chief idea of my life; I will not say the doctrine I have always taught, but the doctrine I should always have liked to teach. That is the idea of taking things with gratitude, and not taking things for granted."
So, this is not merely put on a happy face and pretend all is always well. How I feel isn't always up to me and it is, at least in part, constitutive of my person. Looking at the world through gray-tinted glases much of the time, I see a lot of beauty, a lot of grace in the grit of life. Sunflowers appearing in unexpected places is for me a miracle.
I also tend to take a lot for granted. This is especially true when it comes to people. There are people to whom I need pay far less heed and those who I need cherish and heed much more. As I spent time, years ago now, with my Dad as he lay dying on a gray, cold January day, he told me how he realized that there wasn't much in life that truly matters. It is, therefore, those things do matter that should be my focus.
Lately I have been on a Thompson Twins jag. Because it seems somewhat in tune with what I've written, "King For One Day" is our traditio for this first Friday of February:
I've heard it said
Or maybe read
Only money makes
The world go round
But all the gold
Won't heal your soul
If your world should
Tumble to the ground
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