There is no pain, you are receding.
A distant ships smoke on the horizon.
You are only coming through in waves.
Your lips move but I can’t hear what you’re sayin.
When I was a child I had a fever.
My hands felt just like two balloons.
Now I got that feeling once again.
I can’t explain, you would not understand.
This is not how I am.
I have become comfortably numb.
Pink Floyd
“Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons.”
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)
In the silent darkness of the heart of the night my soul searches for strength to face the spilling blood of the innocent. Do the origins of faith reside in the uncertainties and cruelty of destiny? Is the path to spirituality and acceptance of the inequalities inherent in life found by the trial of fire and pain? Does atonement seek the path of least resistance in the suffering of those most innocent? How do I ebb the rising anger in my soul which consumes my flesh and clouds my mind like a vile poison? It would be easy to steel my emotions and allow my thoughts to drift to the blackness, a world without hope, a life without compassion, an eternity of isolation where pain is held at bay. What justice can be found in the continued torment and suffering of those pure in heart, those who represent the light of the world? I can not understand what lesson is to be learned from the spilling of the blood of those live with the grace of angels, those that have changed so many lives, those that embody all that are good and kind, those that have already suffered intolerable trials of spirit.
Once again the storm clouds of uncertainty approach as I look to the horizon, indifferent to those who stand in the path of fury. After six weeks of wistful calm a second medical opinion casts a shadow of doubt over us once again. A new series of tests on my wife’s mysterious black mass had resulted in another more ominous conclusion of cancer. As if all previous trials of suffering were unable to shake my wife’s unyielding positive view of life, this diagnostic message was targeted at the most consuming fear of all, a long painful and undignified death. Unlike all other tests of faith, she collapsed into a deep depression unable to confront the possibilities of what this might mean. It has been a difficult personal journey concealing our burden from all as we wait for the fog of uncertainty to clear revealing the invariability of the path before us. Standing in the shadow of the future we hold our breath wondering if it is possible that the propitiation of faith will cheat death from its ultimate reward and prevent the spilling of the blood of the innocent.
Once again the storm clouds of uncertainty approach as I look to the horizon, indifferent to those who stand in the path of fury. After six weeks of wistful calm a second medical opinion casts a shadow of doubt over us once again. A new series of tests on my wife’s mysterious black mass had resulted in another more ominous conclusion of cancer. As if all previous trials of suffering were unable to shake my wife’s unyielding positive view of life, this diagnostic message was targeted at the most consuming fear of all, a long painful and undignified death. Unlike all other tests of faith, she collapsed into a deep depression unable to confront the possibilities of what this might mean. It has been a difficult personal journey concealing our burden from all as we wait for the fog of uncertainty to clear revealing the invariability of the path before us. Standing in the shadow of the future we hold our breath wondering if it is possible that the propitiation of faith will cheat death from its ultimate reward and prevent the spilling of the blood of the innocent.
“You desire to know the art of living, my friend? It is contained in one phrase: make use of suffering.”
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be not forever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
Grief not, rather find,
Strength in what remains behind,
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be,
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of Human suffering,
In the faith that looks through death
In years that bring philophic mind.
William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850)
