SUFFERING: PART 2

Anne Morrow Lindbergh: "I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness, and the willingness to remain vulnerable."

And Parker Palmer: "Distancing ourselves from each other's pain is the hidden agenda behind most of our efforts to 'fix' each other with advice. If you take my advice, and do it right, you will get well and I will be off the hook. But if you do not follow my advice, or do not follow it properly, I am off the hook nonetheless: I have done the best I could, and your continued suffering is clearly your fault. By trying to fix you with advice, rather than simply suffering with you, I hold myself away from your pain."

We neither like to suffer ourselves nor see another suffer. Even less do we want to become involved in another's suffering. Perhaps that is the reason why so many suffer in silence and suffer needlessly. Yes, suffering teaches us. It reminds us of our own vulnerability, our own finiteness. It also reminds us that for suffering to be of any value, others must become part of our pain.

It seems to me that to suffer alone is the greatest pain of all. To allow another to suffer alone may be the greatest sin of all. As Palmer suggests, we seem to understand this and so we often, maybe all too often, end up giving advice instead of giving of ourselves. Then we are off the hook, so we would like to think.

But what the sufferer needs is not our words of wisdom but our willingness to be present in his suffering, to mourn with her, to help understand the situation. The sufferer needs not our advice but our love and our willingness to remain vulnerable with him and to suffer with her as well.

We know this to be true because when we are the one who is suffering, who is feeling lost and alone, what we desperately want, even though we are reluctant to voice it, is for someone to be there with us -- to mourn with us, to understand how we feel, to be patient with our impatience, to love us as we are, to be open to the sometimes craziness that suffering causes, to be just as vulnerable as we are.

What we will also discover when we join another in his suffering is that we are not alone. God is with us. For it is in opening ourselves to share the suffering of another that we at the same time open ourselves to the love of God and the strength that comes from that love, but we only learn that truth from first opening ourself to the other.

No one wants to suffer and no one of us wants to see another suffer. Yet we all do. There is no escape. As long as we live, suffering will be part and parcel of this life. What we are called to do is not so much work to eliminate suffering as to be present with those who are suffering. We may never come to understand the whys and wherefores of suffering; but in our being present with one who suffers, we will come to understand ourselves.