Song of Suffering | Contemplify
Hey there Contemplative friend.
Can we carve out some time to sit screen-to-screen and heart-to-heart? Dare we pull on our contemplative heartstrings in a confusing world? Vague questions seduce easy answers that kiss bearded scapegoats. So instead I'll ask, how are you hearing the hum of the universe in your ears during the drain of this pandemic and the energizing force of the social turning?
The months are stacking up. This has given me plenty of time to contemplate on humanity's capacity to endure suffering, now and throughout history. I wonder if the same is true for you. When your days are bowled over by suffering, when your internal landscape is devoid of meaning, when wisdom is muted--how do you cultivate the virtues of the heart in such a harsh climate? Feeling the truth of this and then reading the stats about the collective decline in mental health a further question emerged. Suffering is not new, so how did the ancestors of yesteryears cultivate meaning in spite of ever present suffering?
Over the course of three days I will share reflective meditations that are meant to be savored, chewed on, and digested in your own lived experience. We will look at suffering and meaning (today), exemplary virtuous ancestors (Sunday), and seek to cultivate virtues in our own splendid lives (Monday; this last email will also include the monthly NonRequired Reading List).
Suffering is a song played on repeat. It is the same Sisyphus song no matter what volume you hear it. There is another song that you can hear if you lean in close to your heart. Can you hear it? Catch the Divine tune resounding and refracting between the world’s pain and you. It is a song both virtuous and true.
In this spirit of listening to the suffering places and the Divine tune, I am pressed to pursue what meaning and actionable response can be found in suffering great or small. This is no easy ask. And my pursuit will look quite differently than yours given the multitudes of vectors that make your life yours. There is a unifying principle. Human beings are meaning generators. This dynamic gift has been passed on by our ancestors throughout the generations. Our ancestors modeled meaning-making through the concretizing of sacred inbreakings through the construction of archways, ebenezers, and holy waterways. Place-making with divine addresses. Across all traditions, our ancestors channeled meaningful stories, dances, songs, rituals, and practices of transcendence and relationship. Bodily instruments with Divine tuning. The Divine localization in both person and place carries the potential to shift culture. The world can, and often does, feel out of control (aka suffering). In the presence of ongoing suffering humanity has found ways to stand on the Ground of Being to see through the fog of chaos.
Can we court meaning in the midst of suffering? Depends. The magnitude of our experience of suffering, systems (supportive and oppressive), and the tools at our disposal all play decisive roles. Victor Frankl is an extraordinary example of a person who was able to find meaning in the midst of suffering. Frankl lost everything in three concentration camps and somehow still birthed a brand new branch of psychology out of his experiences within absolute systemic suffering. Frankl would later write, “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”* This is not a call to bypass systemic suffering. We need to work like hell to change the situations that cause suffering while we attend to the human spirit that animates us. This is paramount to imagining new possibilities and waking dormant dreams for a different tomorrow. That is the internal challenge that we meet today. The challenge is to cultivate virtues in the midst of suffering and trusting in the unknowing-knowing that will breach over the bluffs of time.
*Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, 2006, p.116
Tomorrow we will be calling upon on our virtuous ancestors...
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At the edge of suffering, may you find meaning.
Hearing the Suffering Song,
Paul
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P.P.S. The postings to kindle the examined life in a quarantined world are still being glued together daily under Quarantined Qontemplative at the Contemplify basecamp.