We are never more in touch with life than when life is painful, never more in touch with hope than we are then, if only the hope of another human presence to be with us and for us.
Being a good steward of your pain involves all those things, I think. It involves being alive to your life. It involves taking the risk of being open, of reaching out, of keeping in touch with the pain as well as the joy of what happens, because at no time more than at a painful time do we live out of the depths of who we are instead of out of the shallows. There is no guarantee that we will find a pearl in the depths, that our pain will have a happy end, or even any end at all, but at least we stand a chance of finding in those depths who we most deeply and humanly are and who others are. ... What is perhaps most precious about pain is that if it doesn't destroy us, it can confer on us a humanity that needs no words to tell of it and that can help others become human even as they can help us. - Frederick Buechner
(from "Adolescence and the Stewardship of Pain" in Secrets in the Dark)
Being a good steward of your pain involves all those things, I think. It involves being alive to your life. It involves taking the risk of being open, of reaching out, of keeping in touch with the pain as well as the joy of what happens, because at no time more than at a painful time do we live out of the depths of who we are instead of out of the shallows. There is no guarantee that we will find a pearl in the depths, that our pain will have a happy end, or even any end at all, but at least we stand a chance of finding in those depths who we most deeply and humanly are and who others are. ... What is perhaps most precious about pain is that if it doesn't destroy us, it can confer on us a humanity that needs no words to tell of it and that can help others become human even as they can help us. - Frederick Buechner
(from "Adolescence and the Stewardship of Pain" in Secrets in the Dark)
2 comments:
Much needed. Thanks.
Thank you for this, K.
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