Accepting Our Lot in Life Between acceptance and hope lies a tension. According to Buddhist theory, the way out of suffering is through acceptance. By letting go of desire and aversion, by embracing the moment as it is, we become free, not of pain, but of the stories that make our pain miserable. Such acceptance, however, can lead to passivity. Years ago, in a source long forgotten, I read about a Buddhist woman who had grown ill, yet refused medication or medical support. It was her karma to become sick, she believed, and if she were to recover, it would be because it was her karma to get well. Medicine…
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Jesus and the Holy Fool
God Chose Foolish Things In his first letter to the Christian community of Corinth, Paul writes, “But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.” What does this mean? To understand biblical texts, it helps to know something about the context. For instance, during the middle of the first century CE when Paul wrote, the community of Corinth was a relatively new town, a growing commercial center, with a few wealthy business owners and a lot of impoverished citizens. The society was patriarchal, the men vying for prestige and status. Most Corinthians worshiped the…
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Advent, A Season of Hope
Why Celebrate Advent? This Sunday is the first of four Advent Sundays, culminating in a month-long Christian preparation for the celebration of Jesus’s birth. Not everyone celebrates Christmas, and among those who do, not everyone celebrates this time of Advent, of anticipation and waiting and hope. In his article “Seven Reasons to Celebrate Advent,” Ryan Shelton highlights spiritual gifts we can gain when we honor this time of preparation. [1] For instance, he tells us, according to Scripture, God’s plan for Christ’s life and death began at least thousands of years before Mary ever gave birth to him, and God’s plan is still coming to fruition today. We know this because…
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Resilience and Spirituality
Resilience in the Face of Hardship and Trauma As a chaplain and spiritual counselor, I work daily with people whose resilience impresses me. Homeless, struggling to let go of one addiction after another, or grieving the loss of loved ones or marriages or jobs, many of them chronically ill or in pain, these people nonetheless find a way to keep on going, to survive another day. They long to feel better; they want to heal. Not that they never experience despair or curse their hunger or the cold. They do. Some days, they want to give up. Some days I want to give up, and my life’s easy compared to…
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Hope in the Face of Suffering
Hope in the Future What is hope? Could it be trust in a new generation, the joy we feel when we watch young animals at play, babies being born? In our yard, a family of scrub jays has nested in the holly tree. As I write, the father submerges himself in the bird bath while the mother feeds their baby seeds and insects from the garden. Watching them, I smile, thinking of beauty and life that will continue after I am gone. Or could hope be the belief in an existence after death? At the hospital, I sit with a woman who is sick and weary from cancer. She begs…
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The Winter Solstice, Light, and Hope
The Winter Solstice Fills Me with Hope The Winter Solstice came and went this year with little notice from me. After working a long day and attending a meeting, I was focused on little except getting ready for bed, so it wasn’t until the next day during my predawn walk that I realized winter had arrived. The grass was tinged white with frost, the roads sparkled in the light from the street lamps, and the frozen trail crunched beneath my feet. Now and then, my dog lifted his nose, smelling coyotes or raccoons I couldn’t see. The squirrels and birds were asleep. Silence hung in the air. Then I climbed…
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Honoring the Dream
Facing Our Pain In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr’s birthday, this month, we will talk on Sunday about King’s dream and about our own dreams for a better world. Although I start out talking about pain in this column, I am also talking about the dream for justice, equality, and fellowship that King called for. Last Sunday, I attended a service at Eastrose Unitarian Universalist Fellowship where the Rev. David Maynard spoke about pain. He was discussing the challenges and hopes for individuals who suffer from chronic pain. He quoted from a pastoral care pamphlet on pain that said, “Pain is a reliable indicator that something is wrong in…
