Two readings have provided the energy for this space. The first one is from a mother whose daughter suffered a seizure last November and has been in a coma from that fateful day. Her daughter's future is unknown and unknowable yet her faith is strong and full of hope.
"Today is a day of sobriety, of reflection. We remember the One who voluntarily chose to take on human flesh, to experience the indignities and pain of a broken world, and ultimately to bestow His life while suffering the most excruciating of deaths. Seven hundred years before His birth, the prophet Isaiah gives a poignant picture of the Messiah. He uses terms like “despised,” “rejected,” “a man of sorrows,” and “familiar with suffering” (Isa 53:3).
This past year has been a time of sorrow and suffering for our family. It was last year over Easter weekend that Tim’s father and Brenna’s grandfather suddenly passed away. These last four and a half months have been the most trying of our lives as we have watched our daughter’s life hang in the balance and still don’t know what her future holds.
Yet what a comfort is it to know that we can go to the One who can identify with our brokenness and grief, who has promised never to leave us or forsake us, and gives us a hope for the future. We know this life is not the end of our story. The absolute best this world has to offer can in no way compare to the most insignificant corner (if there can ever be such a thing) of our future home.
I stumbled across this quote by Michael Horton, professor of theology and apologetics at Westminster Seminary California, and it spoke to me:
We aren't morbid when we take sin, suffering, and death seriously as Christians. Rather, we can face these tough realities head-on because we know that they have been decisively confronted by our Captain. They have not lost their power to harm, but they have lost their power to destroy us. This biblical piety is not morbid because it doesn't end at the cross, but it also doesn't avoid it. It goes through the cross to the Resurrection. This is why the Christian gospel alone is capable of refuting both denial and despair. The hope of the gospel gives us the freedom to expose the wound of our human condition because it provides the cure.
We are looking forward to celebrating with you on Sunday the Resurrection of our Lord and Savior and the reason for the hope within us."
The second reading is from The Oprah Magazine...Oprah's interview with Thich Nhat Hanh. What stands out for me in this moment are the following responses to Oprah's questions:
- If you breathe in and are aware that you are alive-that you can touch the miracle of being alive-then that is a kind of enlightenment. Many people are alive but don't touch the miracle of being alive.
- With practice, we can always remain alive in the present moment. With mindfulness, you can establish yourself in the present in order to touch the wonders of life that are available in that moment.
- Happiness is the cessation of suffering....so when I become aware of my eyes. I touch one of the conditions of happiness. And when I touch it, happiness comes.
- You need the practice of mindfulness to bring your mind back to the body and establish yourself in the moment.
- Mindfulness helps you go home to the present. And every time you go there and recognize a condition of happiness that you have, happiness comes.
- So whether you are eating, drinking your tea, or doing your dishes, you do it in such a way that freedom, joy, happiness are possible...the art of mindful living
- As you walk, you touch the ground mindfully, and every step can bring you solidity and joy and freedom. Freedom from your regret concerning the past, and freedom from your fear about the future.
- People sacrifice the present for the future. But life is available only in the present.
- We practice mindful walking in order to heal ourselves, because walking like that really relieves our worries, the pressure, the tension in our body and in our mind.
- Deep listening is the kind of listening that can help relieve the suffering of another person....only one purpose: to help him or her to empty his heart. Even if he says things that are full of bitterness, you are still capable of continuing to listen with compassion. Because you know that listening like that, you give that person a chance to suffer less. If you want to help him to correct his perception, you wait for another time. For now, you don't interrupt. You don't argue. If you do, he loses his chance. You just listen with compassion and help him to suffer less.
- Deep listening helps us to recognize the existence of wrong perceptions in the other person and wrong perceptions in us.
- We should spend time walking together, eating together, making acquaintance, telling e2ch other about our own suffering without blame or condemnation.
- Anger is the energy that people use in order to act. But when you are angry, you are not lucid and you might do wrong things. That is why compassion is a better energy. And the energy of compassion is very strong. We suffer. That is real. But we have learned not to get angry and not to allow ourselves to be carried by anger. We realize right away that that is fear. That is corruption.
- People suffer because they are caught in their views.
- Suffering is the fear, the anger, the despair, the anxiety in us.
- So you recognize that fear. You embrace it tenderly and look deeply into it. And as you embrace your pain, you get relief and you find out how to handle that emotion. And if you know how to handle the fear, then you have enough insight in order to solve the problem. The problem is to not allow that anxiety to take over. When these feelings arise, you have to practice in order to use the energy of mindfulness to recognize them, embrace them, look deeply into them.
- Your anxiety is your baby. You have to take care of it. You have to go back to yourself, recognize the suffering in you, embrace the suffering, and you get relief. And if you continue with your practice of mindfulness, you understand the roots, the nature of the suffering, and you know the way to transform it.
- Happiness and suffering support each other. To be is to inter-be. It's like the left and the right. If the left is not there, the right cannot be there.
- You can only recognize your happiness against the background of suffering. If you have not suffered hunger, you do not appreciate having something to eat. If you have not gone through a war, yo don't know the value of peace. That is why we should not try to run away from one thing after another thing. Holding our suffering, looking deeply into it, we find a way to happiness.
- To be loved means to be recognized as existing.
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