Responding to Intimate Suffering
It can be tempting to respond to pain with platitudes.
Because pain is scary; it's messy; it's uncomfortable. And when we see its movement within the body and mind of another, it can seem easier to evade it than to take a seat in its presence. To sacrifice our ideals of solidarity for the safety of separateness.
Theologian and civil rights leader Howard Thurman offers another way:
I share with you the agony of your grief.
The anguish of your heart finds echo in my own.
I know I cannot enter all you feel
Nor bear with you the burden of your pain;
I can but offer what my love does give:
The strength of caring,
The warmth of one who seeks to understand
The silent storm-swept barrenness of so great a loss.
This I do in quiet ways,
That on your lonely path
You may not walk alone.
📝 Questions:
How were you taught to respond, in the moment, to the pain and suffering of others?
When is a time in your life when you sacrificed your ideals for the safety of separateness?
🧰 Resources:
Meditations of the Heart by Howard Thurman (book)
"Conversations with Howard Thurman" (extended video)
Richard Rohr and Barbara Holmes on Solidarity and Activism (article)
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