We were returning from a short camping trip and made the customary stop at the Kwiky Mart for bathroom, coffee, and/or grease when I overheard two working people’s complaints. It came first from the man with the blue shirt with a name on it who was wheeling in a pallet of milk products. “I feel bad all the time. Stomach ache, muscle pains, headache. I never really feel good.” This to a woman who was checking off the items on a delivery list. “Me too,” she agreed. “I start with feeling bad when I get up and it goes on all day.” Both were probably in their mid-40’s and both were overweight, although not massively so. They had the look of the Working Man – tired, slightly pallid, and in need of some kind of pill to keep on truckin’. It is the look of just about everyone past youth, at least in small town America.
The experts would have you say that it’s America’s fault for having fat and corn syrup in everything, and having too much of that everything, but feeling bad is a pretty universal thing. When I was living with the Indians in South America, both the exotic back-woods groups and the more nationalized river peoples, they, too, desperately wanted medicine all the time. With those who could not speak Spanish, they would come to me with an open palm with the other hand pointing to the head or stomach or legs or anywhere, indicating pain and discomfort. What I gave them was aspirin, which they wanted all the time. Most of these people were not even middle-aged, but in their late 20’s and 30’s. They did not have Cheetos, but they did have fires in their roundhouses that would choke those not used to them. No matter, they, too, felt bad much of the time.
Just last week I was down in the garden when a thunderstorm announced itself with a huge zap of lightening followed immediately by a stunning explosion of thunder. Feeling very exposed, I made a mad dash for the house that was some 100 yards uphill. Those first 50 yards felt like a snort of good cocaine – I flew as I hadn’t in decades. I felt young and swift and powerful with wings on my feet. Then, like an old jalopy, everything started to come apart. More than a week later, I am still limping, with a long-range healing process ahead of me for my right Achilles’ tendon. More pain.
Not that that’s the only one. Like the working people at Kwik Trip, I will often wake up not feeling well. I didn’t used to. This is relatively new and something I have attributed to old age, but on second thought, this has always been so, if in different ways. It was as a kid that I experienced the worst sicknesses of my life, from chicken pox to vomiting to really, really bad flues to burning sore throats to coughs that kept me out of school for weeks at a time. All this while slim and trim and active and young, so young that the immune system wasn’t prepared. Later in adult youth I almost never got sick, but often had self-inflicted pains, from hang-overs to broken bones. In short, there has never been a year without noticeable physical trauma, that happening monthly in childhood and now, nearly daily at the beginning of old age.
So it is that pain and sickness have always been Man’s companion. Why this is so can be boiled down to four major reasons: 1) shit happens. It’s just the way it is and then you die; 2) science tells us that the universe is entropic, or gradually loosing energy. The body does the same on a much smaller scale and much quicker pace. This is a fancified way of saying that shit happens; 3) we are a fallen species ever since Eve was tricked by Satan, and are being punished for it. This is true, but punishment alone makes God out to be a ruthless, vengeful tyrant; and 4) we are fallen, yes, but are clay in God’s hands, to be reworked into perfection.
As the reader might guess, the latter seems the most reasonable to me in a world that is both ordered and often indescribably beautiful. So it is said in the book of Jeremiah (18: 1-6), where the Lord tells the prophet that Israel will be destroyed so that it may be remade like a block of clay, as it had fallen into sin beyond redemption. Thus was to follow the scattering of the “lost tribes of Israel” during the Assyrian invasion, with the remnant Juda left behind. Thus the world can still follow the rise and fall of the Jews in the Bible, always returning to the faith, until the time that fulfillment, according to Christians, came in Christ. Thus are we brought to the realization of suffering for purification, and to the retention of hope and redemption for our souls.
So it is understood, but I can say right now that I hate suffering. Throwing up is almost beyond belief, and that is nothing compared to other pains and illnesses. But I have to also say that sometimes it is absolutely necessary. As is gospel at AA, the drunk must first reach bottom before he can rise again from the ashes. Personally, I have experienced prolonged suffering and it has always brought a beneficial change in habits along with greater enlightenment. This is often the only way wrong paths can be righted, or new paths found. Whether or not my imperfections are caused by the Fall of Adam, I do have them and they often – no, almost always – can be altered only by some sort of painful crises. The last crises of all, of course, is in our dying, in which we might hope for the greatest and most beneficial change.
Pain. The last two essays have dealt with the end of our era. Jeremiah preached suffering at the end of Israel’s earlier phase, and so it is being preached now. Just yesterday I was at a picnic where the current mess of our nation was brought up, and it was pretty much understood that we are now entering an era of suffering. More so, many thought, as do I, that this suffering will reach far beyond mere financial corrections. One does not have to be a religious zealot, but merely a social scientist, to see that the basics of our national, social and cultural existence are quickly disappearing, from the definition of the family to the definition of a woman to the definition of governmental function. It is all coming unglued with relentless purpose, just as it had in the times of Jeremiah. We might not have an Assyria to destroy us, but we most certainly have ourselves to do the job, and other nations ready to take advantage of our weakness. But, unlike Israel at that point in its history, the US is important to the entire world, and with our fall or great decline will come the fall or decline of much of the world.
Pain. It will always be with us in an imperfect world. For humans, it provides a learning lesson, given both to the individual as well as to the collective. We do not like it, but those of us who survive and even those who don’t can gain from it. So it is from stubbing a toe to undergoing cancer to undergoing revolution, poverty, and war. Prayer is at the very least a message from the self to the self to give us hope in pain. In a world made of order and beauty, there is every reason to believe in hope. So we speak to ourselves and others in prayer that this crisis, too, will pass, and with that we will find a more perfect world afterwards. So speaks the potter to the clay.
I
We were returning from a short camping trip and made the customary stop at the Kwiky Mart for bathroom, coffee, and/or grease when I overheard two working people’s complaints. It came first from the man with the blue shirt with a name on it who was wheeling in a pallet of milk products. “I feel bad all the time. Stomach ache, muscle pains, headache. I never really feel good.” This to a woman who was checking off the items on a delivery list. “Me too,” she agreed. “I start with feeling bad when I get up and it goes on all day.” Both were probably in their mid-40’s and both were overweight, although not massively so. They had the look of the Working Man – tired, slightly pallid, and in need of some kind of pill to keep on truckin’. It is the look of just about everyone past youth, at least in small town America.
The experts would have you say that it’s America’s fault for having fat and corn syrup in everything, and having too much of that everything, but feeling bad is a pretty universal thing. When I was living with the Indians in South America, both the exotic back-woods groups and the more nationalized river peoples, they, too, desperately wanted medicine all the time. With those who could not speak Spanish, they would come to me with an open palm with the other hand pointing to the head or stomach or legs or anywhere, indicating pain and discomfort. What I gave them was aspirin, which they wanted all the time. Most of these people were not even middle-aged, but in their late 20’s and 30’s. They did not have Cheetos, but they did have fires in their roundhouses that would choke those not used to them. No matter, they, too, felt bad much of the time.
Just last week I was down in the garden when a thunderstorm announced itself with a huge zap of lightening followed immediately by a stunning explosion of thunder. Feeling very exposed, I made a mad dash for the house that was some 100 yards uphill. Those first 50 yards felt like a snort of good cocaine – I flew as I hadn’t in decades. I felt young and swift and powerful with wings on my feet. Then, like an old jalopy, everything started to come apart. More than a week later, I am still limping, with a long-range healing process ahead of me for my right Achilles’ tendon. More pain.
Not that that’s the only one. Like the working people at Kwik Trip, I will often wake up not feeling well. I didn’t used to. This is relatively new and something I have attributed to old age, but on second thought, this has always been so, if in different ways. It was as a kid that I experienced the worst sicknesses of my life, from chicken pox to vomiting to really, really bad flues to burning sore throats to coughs that kept me out of school for weeks at a time. All this while slim and trim and active and young, so young that the immune system wasn’t prepared. Later in adult youth I almost never got sick, but often had self-inflicted pains, from hang-overs to broken bones. In short, there has never been a year without noticeable physical trauma, that happening monthly in childhood and now, nearly daily at the beginning of old age.
So it is that pain and sickness have always been Man’s companion. Why this is so can be boiled down to four major reasons: 1) shit happens. It’s just the way it is and then you die; 2) science tells us that the universe is entropic, or gradually loosing energy. The body does the same on a much smaller scale and much quicker pace. This is a fancified way of saying that shit happens; 3) we are a fallen species ever since Eve was tricked by Satan, and are being punished for it. This is true, but punishment alone makes God out to be a ruthless, vengeful tyrant; and 4) we are fallen, yes, but are clay in God’s hands, to be reworked into perfection.
As the reader might guess, the latter seems the most reasonable to me in a world that is both ordered and often indescribably beautiful. So it is said in the book of Jeremiah (18: 1-6), where the Lord tells the prophet that Israel will be destroyed so that it may be remade like a block of clay, as it had fallen into sin beyond redemption. Thus was to follow the scattering of the “lost tribes of Israel” during the Assyrian invasion, with the remnant Juda left behind. Thus the world can still follow the rise and fall of the Jews in the Bible, always returning to the faith, until the time that fulfillment, according to Christians, came in Christ. Thus are we brought to the realization of suffering for purification, and to the retention of hope and redemption for our souls.
So it is understood, but I can say right now that I hate suffering. Throwing up is almost beyond belief, and that is nothing compared to other pains and illnesses. But I have to also say that sometimes it is absolutely necessary. As is gospel at AA, the drunk must first reach bottom before he can rise again from the ashes. Personally, I have experienced prolonged suffering and it has always brought a beneficial change in habits along with greater enlightenment. This is often the only way wrong paths can be righted, or new paths found. Whether or not my imperfections are caused by the Fall of Adam, I do have them and they often – no, almost always – can be altered only by some sort of painful crises. The last crises of all, of course, is in our dying, in which we might hope for the greatest and most beneficial change.
Pain. The last two essays have dealt with the end of our era. Jeremiah preached suffering at the end of Israel’s earlier phase, and so it is being preached now. Just yesterday I was at a picnic where the current mess of our nation was brought up, and it was pretty much understood that we are now entering an era of suffering. More so, many thought, as do I, that this suffering will reach far beyond mere financial corrections. One does not have to be a religious zealot, but merely a social scientist, to see that the basics of our national, social and cultural existence are quickly disappearing, from the definition of the family to the definition of a woman to the definition of governmental function. It is all coming unglued with relentless purpose, just as it had in the times of Jeremiah. We might not have an Assyria to destroy us, but we most certainly have ourselves to do the job, and other nations ready to take advantage of our weakness. But, unlike Israel at that point in its history, the US is important to the entire world, and with our fall or great decline will come the fall or decline of much of the world.
Pain. It will always be with us in an imperfect world. For humans, it provides a learning lesson, given both to the individual as well as to the collective. We do not like it, but those of us who survive and even those who don’t can gain from it. So it is from stubbing a toe to undergoing cancer to undergoing revolution, poverty, and war. Prayer is at the very least a message from the self to the self to give us hope in pain. In a world made of order and beauty, there is every reason to believe in hope. So we speak to ourselves and others in prayer that this crisis, too, will pass, and with that we will find a more perfect world afterwards. So speaks the potter to the clay.
I
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