I know people who seem to give the impression spiritual life is nothing but blissful comfort and joy.
My experience of spiritual life is different. Spiritual life has lessons to change our lives, deep truths, inspiring examples. Spiritual life touches our most excruciating pain and unforgettable anguish.
Spiritual life finds and fills us in our most challenging, painful moments. When loss or abandonment breaks our hearts, when illness or injury torments our bodies, when we cannot understand.
Our lives are lived with pain. Sacred depth blankets us when we suffer in the death of those closest to us, who have inspired us. Spiritual life keeps us breathing when we are not certain we can continue. Spiritual life fills us in the face of injustice, of fear, of despair, of physical and emotional pain. Whether our own pain makes us want to surrender, or we share the pain of people on the other side of the world.
We experience pain as an enemy, something we work hard to avoid at all costs. No one wants to do something painful. We struggle against pain and its effect on us. When we are in pain, all we want is to feel better again.
There are deep lessons for us in the pain we feel. Pain shows us uncomfortable truths. Like a young child learning not to touch a hot stove, pain teaches us what we do not want to do. As we struggle and fight against pain, we come to see when, and how, to stop struggling.
The people I know who feel the most pain show me how to close my eyes and experience spiritual life in the midst of pain.
Where is spiritual life in your pain?
When and how do you stop struggling against pain?
[Image by Patrick Denker]
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