reflections on pain...
Pain is such where it causes us to focus on ourselves. WE have this pain and WE must get rid of it, and the ONLY thing that matters is feeling better. Put at the same time, I think a mark of spiritual maturity is not caring about anything else but God, even when it hurts. Don't worry, I'm not advocating ascetism or the strict faith of the monastaries when I say this. I'm only saying that when pain and tragedy and heartache do come, that we love God more, even more than we want relief.
At the same time, God doesn't want us to detach ourselves from the world either. Feeling anything, be it pain or pleasure or the love of the masses, is distinctly human and when we feel, a part of us is longing for a life how God made us, a life right out of Gen 1. (Simply, I believe that human emotion is conecting with this genesis-1 paradise life, specifically it's presence or it's absence in the world today.) However, I think my point is that we must react to that emotion by saying, "I will feel this in the normal human course of things, but I will love God more. I will seek Him even more than I want the cessation and or continuation of this state (depending on what you are feeling at the moment). God wants us to pursue Him with priority above everything in Heaven and Earth.
God of longing, show us your face. Show us the life for which we were made. Be there in the midst of our suffering and our pleasures. Let us scream, "blessed be your name" as Job did but let us really mean it, that you really are blessed above every good and bad thing we go through. Let us bless your name in both the good times and the bad times, both are difficult and in both we desprately yearn for you, God of this underground romance. Starfire God, come, show up. Be with MSU as school starts. Keep people safe and let us all drink deep of destiny as one people, together pursuing the great romance. Be there God. BE THERE!!!!!!!!! Passion of Christ, Consume us all even past the point of our pride.
Amen
I love You God,
Daniel
posted by Daniel @ 5:01 下午
1 comments
1 Comments:
See, there is a certain degree of balance between the philosophies of the East and West. The Eastern people say "Train yourself to let go of the ones you fear to lose. Miss them do not. Mourn for them do not. Rejoice for those who become one with the force." (okay...so that's not really Eastern, that's from a galaxy long ago and far far away...but still, it's eastern philosophy of Yoga and Buddhism...meditate and detach yourself from this world.)
Then there is the western idea of embracing your feelings and journaling them, writing poetry about them, finding support groups, shedding your tears, talking to a friend, seeing a therapist, dissecting yourself from the inside until you know yourself and where you came from.
Neither idea is always helpful. My friend Josh Bryan kept his room exactly the same after he died. It's like a shrine to him, encasing who he was. I don't know if she ever really moved on. She made a HUGE book of every letter he ever wrote, every picture of him ever take, lists of all of his favorite friends, foods, etc, in an attempt to preserve his identity. I own one of those books, but haven't read it through, because it doesn't help me to let go.
The problem with going to the other extreme and detaching is that it makes us stop caring. We must care!
The correct way to look at pain is the biological way: Physical pain is the body's way of telling you that tissue was damaged. Emotional pain is the mind's way of telling you that your soul was damaged. If you want the damage to heal, you don't pick at the wound and let it fester. Nor do you take eight aspirin and pretend that your broken arm will go away on its own.
The correct way to deal with pain depends on what the source of the pain is. Some issues WILL go away on their own, and you need to recognize that and give it time. Some issues need a doctor or a spiritual healer to give you something to treat your pain.
Pain signals you that there's damage. To numb that doesn't solve the problem. Deal with pain, but don't let it become a god. It would make a very poor one.
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