Buechner: A Good Steward of Pain

 Buechner: A Good Steward of Pain

“I am sure there are one hundred and six ways we have of coping with pain. Another way is to be a good steward of it.” Frederick Buechner, A Crazy Holy Grace, Zondervan, p. 21.

Two book clubs in which I am participating have been reading A Crazy Holy Grace, a new collection of some of Frederick Buechner essays about pain and memory. In one story taken from a previous book, The Eyes of the Heart, Buechner writes about a special series of rooms in his home that makes up his sacred space. He describes his writing space, the library, the largest room with ceiling-high shelves of books with the Uncle Wiggily Series, the first editions, the unique objects that are meaningful to him, framed autographs of heroes such as Elizabeth I, sermons of John Donne, inscribed portraits of heroes such as Mark Twain and Anthony Trollope.

In his imagination Buechner then invites people from his past into what he calls his Magic Kingdom. He carries on this loving and humorous conversation with his ninety-four-year-old grandmother, Naya, whom he obviously dearly loves. She describes their relationship as “a marriage made in heaven. I loved to talk and you loved to listen.” Buechner asks her about death. Naya describes it as “stepping off of a streetcar before it has quite come to a stop.”

Buechner has written extensively about his mother who deals with her pain by burying or forgetting about it and his father who deadens his pain with alcohol and finally a tragic suicide when Buechner is ten years old. Buechner seems to have worked through difficulties in those relationships by writing about them. However, he still cannot invite his parents into his sacred space because of fear that they may be too much or too little.

Buechner is modelling for us two ways to allow God to work through our pain from the past. First, we can bring back in our imagination to a sacred space those with whom we feel safe and let them guide us through our pain. Second, when we are not comfortable dialoguing directly with those with whom we had difficulty, we can dialogue with them on paper. God works to heal us in both ways.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

Buechner, Miller: Faith

Buechner, Miller: Faith

“There was no one on the faculty who left so powerful and lasting an impression as James Muilenburg…. ‘Every morning when you wake up,’ he used to say, ‘before you reaffirm your faith in the majesty of a loving God, before you say I believe for another day, read the Daily News with its record of the latest crimes and tragedies of mankind and then see if you can honestly say it again.’ He was a fool in the sense that he didn't or couldn't or wouldn't resolve, intellectualize, evade, the tensions of his faith but lived those tensions out, torn almost in two by them at times.” Frederick Buechner, Now and Then, The Frederick Buechner Center, Frederick Buechner Quote of the Day 

Donald Miller also struggles with this issue as a young Christian in Blue Like Jazz as all people of faith must do at some time or another. How can a loving God allow so much suffering in the world? So many people come for spiritual direction seeking an answer to this question as well.  Faith means believing in something we cannot see or understand, and indeed the question of suffering is something we cannot understand. It is a struggle and a mystery.

Buechner goes on to describe Muilenburg as wearing his faith like a torn garment but holding onto it for dear life. I can see our faith like that torn and frayed garment as a symbol of our struggle with the question of suffering. I see the many times we tear that garment as the Hebrews tear that part of their garment over their heart at the death of a loved one. Our faith garment is covered with ashes as we have worn it sitting down and mourning the cruel inhuman suffering and death of so many from violence, prejudice, and disease.

We can only hold on to the mystery when we see glimpses of Easter and the empty tomb that come from the many Good Friday experiences. We daily experience healing of wounds and see healing dramatically shining through in others if we only look for and participate in that healing. We will see walls break down, wars cease, people forgiving small and unforgivable hurts, new cures for disease developing, family members beginning to speak to each other, but most of all we will begin to see Christ in each other. Christ was there all along, but our anger and resentment blinded us.

 Often, we are healed when someone known and unknown comes and looks for and sees the Christ in us.  This is called spiritual direction.

Joanna joannaseibert

Gould: kindness

 Gould: Kindness

 “Good and kind people outnumber all others by thousands to one. The tragedy of human history lies in the enormous potential for destruction in rare acts of evil, not in the high frequency of evil people. Complex systems can only be built step by step, whereas destruction requires but an instant. Thus, in what I like to call the Great Asymmetry, every spectacular incident of evil will be balanced by 10,000 acts of kindness, too often unnoticed and invisible as the “ordinary” efforts of a vast majority.

We have a duty, almost a holy responsibility, to record and honor the victorious weight of these innumerable little kindnesses, when an unprecedented act of evil so threatens to distort our perception of ordinary human behavior.” Stephen Jay Gould, New York Times, Sept 26, 2001.

Learned many small acts of kindness from Reed.

A longtime friend, Dr.  Steve Thomason, dean of St. Mark’s Cathedral, in Seattle sent out this quote several months ago from Stephen Jay Gould from almost twenty years ago for all of us to consider. The human condition seems most often not even able to be dualistic, seeing a constant more equal struggle between good and evil, but usually seeing evil as an overwhelming greater force. We receive all A’s but one B on our report card. We agonize and only remember the B. We only remember the one line we missed in our class play or our presentation. We obsess over our rejection letters rather than celebrating the acceptances for college or a new job. We think daily about the diagnosis we missed and forget about the thousands we correctly made.  We forgot to visit our friend the week or day before she dies, but we forget about all the hundreds of other visits we made during her illness. 

The morning, noon, evening and late news is overwhelming about the human tragedy, deaths, violence. On a good day, perhaps there is that last thirty second segment about someone’s kindness.

Gould, evolutionary biologist and historian of science, reminds us that the world is not dualistic but overwhelmingly made up of kindness rather than evil.  Gould believes the problem is that these acts of kindness are so small they go unnoticed. Evil stops us in our tracks, immediately gets our attention, and blinds us with its bright orange halo.

How do we put on a new pair of glasses and see the world differently? That is the pathway to even more obvious acts of kindness. This begins with a small, simple step called gratitude. I have so many friends who survive unbelievable tragedy by making and remembering a gratitude list each day, most often at night before they go to sleep. I have spiritual friends who even send me their daily gratitude list. By their act, they are encouraging me to do the same.   

Joanna  joannaseibert.com