[SB] Sabbath Blessing

[Molly Wolf]

The Great Chain

Last week, in Toronto, a young man, Kevin Madden, was sentenced as an adult 
offender. Kevin was 16 when he stabbed his adoring 12-year-old brother 
Johnathon 71 times in November of 2003. Johnathon died in a welter of blood.

There are some types of pain that one cannot begin to imagine, and the pain 
of those boys' mother is one of them. She's lost one child at the other 
child's hands. She's lost the older child to his own extraordinary mindset 
-- it's hard to tell what. And I'm not going to get into the 
psychopathologizing mindgames (psychopathy? personality disorders? who cares!).

What matters is that this is Major Pain and it puts the rest of us where we 
belong to be: in our place.

I do not believe in the Great Chain of Suffering: "my suffering's bigger'n 
yours". I remember a workshop I was at, ten years ago, for divorced and 
separated Christians: one of its strongest suits was that nobody was making 
any comparisons. "My husband left me, and I had to give up our home, and 
that meant having to put down our old sick collie": that hurt. "I had to 
leave my husband because he was sexually abusing our daughter": that hurt. 
Hurt is hurt, and it's real, and it matters. There should be no superiority 
in hurt, only companionship.

And yet; and yet.

I've done my own share of Interesting Times, but I have never been -- and 
would never pretend to be -- in the shoes of Kevin's and Johnathon's 
mother. I know better than that. I can only be humbled by suffering of an 
intensity and depth I have never encountered. I can only put my own 
experiences into a new and less engaging context, by edging my mind into 
the same general neighbourhood as hers. I've got kids. I can imagine 
--  and yet I can't.

There is no Great Chain of Suffering. But perhaps, as a sort of discipline, 
it's useful to imagine such a thing -- not to claim that I suffer more'n 
you, but to imagine that my sufferings aren't all that awful in the larger 
scheme of things. My Cain has never slain my Abel. I have not been called 
upon to lay my only child upon the altar. I have not watched a parent or 
child or partner being herded off into *that* line, which meant death. I 
have never hung from a cross, alternately tearing my flesh as I rose up to 
gasp for breath or slowly suffocating. (Sorry, I know that's harsh, but 
sometimes it needs to be.)  I do not have AIDS; my kids, although they've 
had it tough by suburban North American standards, have led (on the whole) 
a pretty sheltered existence.

And yet, and yet.

God -- who could chose to suffer not at all -- chose instead to slip under 
the divide between the divine and the human and to suffer alongside of us. 
God didn't need to do that. It was God's choice, and a choice made in love.

We can (and I certainly have!) be deeply engaged by whatever pain we're 
going through, and we can ask that others put down their own pain to 
support and tend to us. Sometimes that's entirely appropriate. A dear 
friend is going through the beautiful/agonizing process of nursing her 
husband, who has brain cancer; she is entirely within her rights to share 
her experiences and to ask for our support. Objectively speaking, she's up 
against the big stuff.

And sometimes a person just needs to whinge. It was a rotten day. I need a 
whine with my cheese. But only briefly, and I'll get over it.

But there is a balance between Stiff Upper Lip and Let It All Hang Out. For 
Anglicans, this is a peculiarly difficult and sensitive issue, and I'm 
watching it at play in both my cybercommunity and my parish life. If we 
don't sometimes stiffen our upper lips, we run the risk of being dependent 
and self-absorbed. We're in the Great Chain of Suffering, which does not 
entertain selflessness and modesty. But if, on the other hand, we don't 
allow people in genuine, deep distress to share what they're going through, 
then we fail to minister to them. If we refuse to admit that we're in 
genuine, deep distress, we cut off God's ministry, which comes through 
loving human touch.

And sometimes, the border between the two is as clear as Bay of Fundy 
fog.  There is, and is not, a reality about the Princess and the Pea; some 
people are genuinely more sensitive than others, and what's one to do about 
that? I know a good and loving woman who is just about practically 
skinless; stuff that drips off my hide corrodes hers something terrible. 
Who's to make sense of that?

The answer, I think, is the one God took: humility.

I can regard whatever-it-is I'm going through and think about Johnathon's 
mother. I can think of a mother in Africa, dying of AIDS, confiding her own 
infected children to the auntie who (she knows) is already overwhelmed. I 
can consider the possibility that maybe some of whatever I'm going through 
may be the consequences of my own actions and attitudes. I can consider 
what I may do to reach outside my own whatever-it-is and help out with 
someone else's suffering. I can ask how I may be, for someone in need, God 
with the warm human face on.

Or I may remain stuck in my own suffering, my own self-righteousness, my 
own anger, my own self-obsession, my own neediness, my desire to receive 
care and not give it. My choice. Not God's.

Good God, remind me of what choices you want. Please, and often.