So I lean over and hold your hand and beg God to give me some of the pain, and yet I am scared crapless because I know enough to know that I won't deal with it well--and in truth, I don't want it. I don't want to be away from the color stream. What I am truly doing is trying to be with you, because I sense that you feel so deeply alone. And I want the pain to be gone: perhaps 'many hands makes light pain.' A feeble hope. It is one of the central strands of the human being, that drive to make sure that another is not abandoned, alone. And so I try all kinds of gymnastics to make sure I can step in, somehow, to offer advice, to encourage, to exhort, to hold out hope.
How do we truly be with another? There are many ways: sharing bread and butter; in vino veritatis; doing something together, Martin Buber's we looking out together at the world outside; the I-Thou of intimacy both spiritual and physical.
But what happens when someone is within an experience so profound, one which rakes up the debris at the bottom of the soul, one which challenges everything we hold onto, pain and suffering building a nine-foot wall between one and the rest of the world? What happens when I cannot connect to your experience, like trying to connect with someone who has been to war when all I know is peace?
I am cut off from you as you are cut off from me, because the normal means of human connection become mute in the face of this howling sickness that you must bear alone. Are you giving up? Should I do more? We cannot communicate across this abyss of human weakness and helplessness.
I think of Aristotle's Poetics. An odd thing, but there is something in it for the watcher by the sickbed. For Aristotle, tragedy was a part of poetry, and one of the highest forms of the art, having five basic elements: imitates a human action; arouses pity and fear; displays human being as such; ends in wonder; is inherently beautiful (J. Sachs).
You, my friend, my fellow human being, are not an imitation; you are not a drama--but your sickness and suffering do certainly arouse pity and fear in me. Pity? We may think of this as either a pedantic, condescending attitude, or an over-rush of sentimental slop. For the Greeks, the defect or excess of pity is described by these two extremes: but the real pity is a power, a faculty, through which we can see who we truly are; through the witness of another's suffering we see the 'life abundant' lost, the joy and vitality and power that we finally begin to recognize, in wonder, as beautiful. It is like an artist who paints a figure by using shadows; the shape of a human being comes into focus through the clever use of dark colors. Suffering in another, especially that not a direct consequence of one's own sin, is like the shadowing that allows us to see again how beautiful life is, your life, my friend, your particular, irreplaceable life. I see the true beauty of your soul when all else has been washed, burned away by this suffering.
What about fear? Who has not felt fear by the bedside of the very sick? Aristotle says in his Rhetoric that what we pity in another arouses fear in ourselves: the suffering of another can show us ourselves, perhaps for the first time, as in a mirror. It provokes questions in us about what we truly value, what we are truly unwilling to give up: and gives us, as it does for the sufferer, a chance to re-visit those priorities. Do I care too much about what I look like, or how much money I have, or the worldly things of life?
There is another level, though, past Aristotle, past tragedy. The author Peter Leithart (who oddly enough, when one takes into account his last name, writes brilliantly about comedy) wrote that in the Kingdom of Christ, tragedy is not truly possible, that there is ultimate joy, always, beyond the curtain closing on what we, in this life, often see as tragic: the death of young Philomena in early Christian Rome becoming a fountain of life for others; the doctor-mother who gave her life for her unborn child, who became a great saint for our times...so within the Kingdom of Christ, our end-sight for tragedy is not, finally just the human being and the beauty therein.
The beauty here, at your sickbed, is you, my teacher, uniting yourself with Christ on the cross. In one sense, the crucifixion does what any great tragedy does: arouses pity and fear; calls us to question ourselves, to look within ourselves to delineate again what we truly value. It also calls us to wonder at the love of God-made-man, to see for the first time the joining of humanity with God in an action that is at once tragic and also incredibly beautiful: the free giving up of infinite power, the infinite condescension and humility of the Creator for His creatures.
The Resurrection is what changes it all, makes all tragedy tremble and bow and give up its olive crown. The meaning of suffering itself holds now within it the possibility of redemption, offering oneself for others, a healing and return to this life as an enfleshed soul glowing more brightly like gold, of a greater life, a participation in glory, giving glory to God and a witness that this world is not the only world, that this life is not the only life.
I think of Aristotle's Poetics. An odd thing, but there is something in it for the watcher by the sickbed. For Aristotle, tragedy was a part of poetry, and one of the highest forms of the art, having five basic elements: imitates a human action; arouses pity and fear; displays human being as such; ends in wonder; is inherently beautiful (J. Sachs).
You, my friend, my fellow human being, are not an imitation; you are not a drama--but your sickness and suffering do certainly arouse pity and fear in me. Pity? We may think of this as either a pedantic, condescending attitude, or an over-rush of sentimental slop. For the Greeks, the defect or excess of pity is described by these two extremes: but the real pity is a power, a faculty, through which we can see who we truly are; through the witness of another's suffering we see the 'life abundant' lost, the joy and vitality and power that we finally begin to recognize, in wonder, as beautiful. It is like an artist who paints a figure by using shadows; the shape of a human being comes into focus through the clever use of dark colors. Suffering in another, especially that not a direct consequence of one's own sin, is like the shadowing that allows us to see again how beautiful life is, your life, my friend, your particular, irreplaceable life. I see the true beauty of your soul when all else has been washed, burned away by this suffering.
What about fear? Who has not felt fear by the bedside of the very sick? Aristotle says in his Rhetoric that what we pity in another arouses fear in ourselves: the suffering of another can show us ourselves, perhaps for the first time, as in a mirror. It provokes questions in us about what we truly value, what we are truly unwilling to give up: and gives us, as it does for the sufferer, a chance to re-visit those priorities. Do I care too much about what I look like, or how much money I have, or the worldly things of life?
There is another level, though, past Aristotle, past tragedy. The author Peter Leithart (who oddly enough, when one takes into account his last name, writes brilliantly about comedy) wrote that in the Kingdom of Christ, tragedy is not truly possible, that there is ultimate joy, always, beyond the curtain closing on what we, in this life, often see as tragic: the death of young Philomena in early Christian Rome becoming a fountain of life for others; the doctor-mother who gave her life for her unborn child, who became a great saint for our times...so within the Kingdom of Christ, our end-sight for tragedy is not, finally just the human being and the beauty therein.
The beauty here, at your sickbed, is you, my teacher, uniting yourself with Christ on the cross. In one sense, the crucifixion does what any great tragedy does: arouses pity and fear; calls us to question ourselves, to look within ourselves to delineate again what we truly value. It also calls us to wonder at the love of God-made-man, to see for the first time the joining of humanity with God in an action that is at once tragic and also incredibly beautiful: the free giving up of infinite power, the infinite condescension and humility of the Creator for His creatures.
The Resurrection is what changes it all, makes all tragedy tremble and bow and give up its olive crown. The meaning of suffering itself holds now within it the possibility of redemption, offering oneself for others, a healing and return to this life as an enfleshed soul glowing more brightly like gold, of a greater life, a participation in glory, giving glory to God and a witness that this world is not the only world, that this life is not the only life.
So how do I connect with you on your sickbed? I have Christ in me; you have Christ in you. I must keep in mind that Deeper Life, that ultimate purpose that runs like a surveyor's sight line beyond the confines of this world.
Can I finally climb up that ledge; can I be a we with you, in your pain, through Him?
I must dig deep inside myself to find Christ, who waits in a dim corner, an often poor, neglected corner with His hands ready to break the bread and heal my blindness to Him. I must peel the ego-layers down, and believe against all worldly belief that He is there, in me. And you must do the same--in your suffering, not the least which is expressed in every sigh, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani.
The Christ in me points out that you are a living icon of Him in your bed and that He allows you that immeasurable privilege despite your weakness and sinfulness and unworthiness; that I must light a candle in front of you, I must meet the flame of His spirit in me with the flame of Him in you, and then I am with you, because He is in both of us, despite my helpless, sinful, weakness. And then I realize how much I am actually suffering with you--that the angst of those around the cross must have truly meant something to Christ; the love that drove them to hang on the edge, and feel helpless, was part of the redemptive suffering that made them all one with each other, with Him, the oneness He asked His Father to create: who knew it would begin that soon? Who knew that the crucifixion was the source, the beginning, of real community, a source that opened a chasm wide in our hearts through which the Father might assuage us and be with us in our helplessness, allowing us to be with Him, through this unity, in the deepest perfection?
So I am with you, in Christ. In Christ.
