A belated paper post

I know I was supposed to post this some time ago. It has been rolling around in my head and in my computer for quite some time.

I am interested in grief and sorrow and suffering. The essence of great story, Dr. Sexson says, comes from those thing which are difficult.

Premise: Suffering is incommensurable with our “crimes” or sins.

Quote: “We suffer into the truth”
-Aeschylus

-Scars are paraded as evidence that we’ve been “through the fire” -Dr. Sexson

I have this small book that has helped me significantly in my journey through this great grief. The first time I opened the book, I opened it to this page:


Quote: “She thought that she had never before had a chance to realize the might, grimness and tenderness of God. She thought that now for the first time she began to know herself, and she gained extraordinary hope in this beginning of knowledge” --James Agee

“If we have ever wondered about the limits of our strength and our ability to endure, our experience of loss will tell us much. Our life is shaken to the foundation. But we survive. And out of this terrible, rarefied self-knowledge comes, if we are fortunate, a kind of empathy with all of creation--a senseof the wonder at the suffering and the beauty, of the world. We know ourselves to be in this world, to be part of it and also that it is out of our hands. We cannot manage any of it, but we are in the hands of One who can."

I found this quote and this passage so helpful in that moment. I know that I have learned much about myself through my experience of trauma, tragedy and grief. I learned that I have the ability to remain calm in the worst situation I can possibly imagine. I have learned that I have a deep reserve of strength upon which I can draw on during moments of extreme need. I have learned of the strength of my mother, and the strength of myself. I have learned that we are completely out of control of what life hands us. All that I can do now is appreciate what I have. I have wonderful memories. I will always be the daugher of an intelligent, loving, wonderful man. I have the legacy of his unconditional love. I have memories of the man who was my father; and I have no unfinished buisness with him. Our relationship was idealistic, pure, and something I will treasure with all of my heart for the rest of my days. Perhaps I treasure our special relationship even more because of his untimely death. I certainly have examined much more of the ways in which I am like him than I would have otherwise. And I have learned to do what dad always told me to do: "count your blessings". I have many. I have found so much love and support from many different directions. I have found connections everywhere with people who have been in the "belly of the fish".

Suffering is natural and as much a part of life as joy. The book of Job tells us that suffering is not connected directly with our actions. Jonah tells us that suffering is unavoidable--we cannot run from our lives.

In my paper, I will talk about suffering in the macrocosm. I will trace the suffering of Job, drawing on my previous blog on the subject, and I will trace the suffering with Jacob. I will show how those who suffer--which is all of us (we have all lost SOMETHING, and we will all experience loss and grief). emerge from their suffering with something of value. We learn from our experiences of suffering; our perspective is shifted, and we gain a sort of worldly-wisdom. And we are capable of coming through so much more than we ever imagined. We learn about ourselves from suffering.


Now, some random musings on suffering:

Quote:
O! that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew;
Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d
His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter! O God! O God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world.
-William Shakespeare

Reason for God: because we need someone or something to question. The randomness is difficult to understand, why do we search for meaning and understanding? Is it easier to question some percieved entity (God; the great spirit; God as we create him in our own image? a thought I had while in Origins class)

I believe in a connected spirituality as a part of the human experience. I believe in the connection between all things in the world; I do not believe in coincidence. My dad told me in recent years that he no longer believed in coincidence, but that he believed there was a specific order to the universe and the events that take place in each of our lives. When he told me, I felt like he was confiding some deep secret belief. And I was unsure of how I felt. I felt uncomfortable with the thought that things are ”pre-ordained“. Perhaps it made me feel less of some sense of control. But as events have taken place in my life since, I truly believe everything happens for a reason. The experiences I’ve had in my life leading up to the moment of my dad’s death have given me the strength and wisdom to cope; I have the self-knowledge that I will again find my feet and learn to stand in this world without a father. And with this self-knowledge and with this experience, this story, my story, I hope that someday I can help other people. Just as those who have been close to death and loss hold my hand now.

Quote (reminds me of Jacob’s thoughts when Wanda aka Sarah died):
”I don’t believe you dead. How can you be dead if I still feel you? Maybe, like God, you changed into something different that I’ll have to speak to in a different way, but you not dead to me Nettie.“ -Alice Walker

”For when is death not within ourselves?...Living and dead are the same, and so are awake and asleep, young and old.“ --Heraclitus
We are all part of the same story, ultimately (macrocosm). May we find comfort in our darkest moments of suffering in the knowledge that all suffer, all will suffer. We are not, in fact alone, no matter how isolated we feel by our experience. And our experience exists for a reason, experience brings with it lessons and growth.


Thank you class, for allowing me to share my story. And thank you for sharing your stories with me. I have found comfort and strength from connections, and with the telling of my story. We must all tell our story.

”There is a gravitational pull, an endless current which we do not recognize which draws us beyond all things and people, but at the same time more deeply and freely into them.“ --Edward J. Farrell

There are ambiguous gifts of suffering. We emerge with a larger sense of the world, a greater perspective; a sense of wonder at the world and a sense of mystery.
Grief pushes us to the edge of experience and in that we are forced to explore the dark corners of ourselves. As well as the dark corners of what it is to be human.

Death has the effect of knocking the wind out of the living. We stumble forward, feeling paralyzed by grief. Yet, at some point, we realize that we must slowly return to the world of the living.

”Feeling light within, I walk“ --Navajo Night Chant