The way out of suffering is also the way in, that only by entering into communion with human suffering can relief be found.

— Henri Nouwen

It’s an intriguing concept there: entering into communion with human suffering.  I’m not sure exactly what it means, but I know the words will roll around in the back of my mind and heart like stones in a river.

The idea of suffering is, on its own, intriguing.  See, suffering isn’t the same thing as hurting or having pain.  Suffering is a state of mind that we choose, a particular state of distress that is caused by pain or the fear of pain.  From the medical dictionary at mondofacto, suffering is:

a state of severe distress associated with events that threaten the intactness of the person.

This distinction is important because there are some who live with a great deal of pain, but who don’t appear to suffer.  There are others who suffer greatly at the smallest of ouchies.  And there are yet others who suffer greatly from anxiety, feeling their intactness threatened before a painful event even happens.

Simply put: Pain happens to us; suffering is one possible response.

Once we descend into suffering, it can indeed be difficult to pull back out of it.  When we suffer, we feel each fear, pain, or symptom exquisitely.  Our suffering increases our pain, and our pain increases our suffering.  It becomes a feedback loop that we can’t escape, and it’s so easy to fall into despair and depression.

The idea of entering into communion with human suffering feels almost Jungian to me, that we must engage with the parts of ourselves that we’d rather leave alone.  We who suffer must first accept that we have a reason to suffer, that we are feeling the threats to our person and that these threats are real.  Humans are especially good at denial, at refusing to accept things we don’t want to accept.  Pain, illness, and anxiety would definitely be pretty high on the list of things we don’t like and don’t want to have to deal with.

We know that resurrection can only happen through death.  Jesus didn’t come to his resurrected body until after he was arrested, tried, beaten, humiliated, and publicly executed.  The gospel accounts offer mere hints of his suffering, of Jesus praying so hard that he was sweating blood, of his prayer that he might not have to go through with it, of his anguished words from the cross, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?  The only way to Easter is through Good Friday.  The only way to new life is through the cross.

I know that, in my own suffering, I have prayed this same line from the psalms: why have you forsaken me?  At these times, we feel keenly our separation from God, and we become so wrapped up in our own pain and suffering that we couldn’t perceive God if God smacked us upside the head.  It is not that God has forsaken us, but that, in our suffering, we have forsaken God.

So we enter into communion with our suffering, something every human experiences.  This doesn’t mean that we wallow in self-pity, but that we acknowledge our suffering, that we recognize that all persons suffer during their lives.  We may imagine the suffering of Jesus, or we may call up other examples from history or friendship.  And as we walk through the suffering — the valley of the shadow of death — we come to the place where we can nail our suffering to the cross of Christ and experience resurrection.

It doesn’t mean we won’t suffer again.  It doesn’t wipe out suffering from the world.  But it gives us a respite, and it gives us a path through the suffering that we can use next time.

Who knows.  I may have gotten Mr. Nouwen’s ideas completely wrong.  They’ll continue rolling around in my mind and heart.  But I know he’s on to something here, something really important.

(Source: twitter.com)