Pain

Pain.

It does something to you. Chronic pain, with which I am familiar is a constant companion. It is always the passenger on this journey that is always with you, even when it is not. It can alter your plan, your day, your view, your choices, but you so badly want it to just take a back seat. It always wants to ride shotgun. You can dull it, ignore it, accept it, live with it, but it always seems to have a word, though you never want it to be the last word. It is a part of you but hopefully never what defines you. I mean, who wants to be a pain. Pain sucks.

Then, there is acute pain. It jumps on you like a rabid monkey. It is something you try so hard to get away from. You will do anything to stop it. Relief is so good.

Now. Right now. My life is dictated by both parts and sides of pain.

Right now, though I deny it even to my self, I am in pain. This is my confessional. I come before you admitting the pain. My chest hurts, my head hurts, my gut hurts. Most of all, at the moment, is that my spirit hurts. I'm tired of hurting. I feel a deeper pain creeping in. A sadness that goes into my bones, my soul. The pain, this constant companion, seems to have taking roots beyond my body and into my spirit. I don't want it there. I don't know where else to go. So, I go to God. That is all I know to do. It is all I can do.

God, I am in pain.

Voices in my Head

I had my final evaluation today of my first unit of Supervisory Education. It was very difficult for me. Not the evaluation itself so much, but the voices that were speaking in my head as I participated in it. I was very aware of some old voices telling me that I can't measure up. I felt like I failed. I knew in my head that the experience was an opportunity to learn, but I had a multitude of voices telling me that I just can't measure up. With my health, the process, the accident, the infection, my wife, my children, the loss of my car, the loss of my role in chaplaincy, the ethics case that won't end, the neverending flow of tasks to do. I am becoming overwhelmed. Not to mention that I am feeling a need for a spiritual break. A retreat. A time to just be with myself to discover who I am in relationship with God.

So, I cried. I sobbed really. A lot. The last time I cried like that I was watching Bridge to Taribithia. Before that it was Saving Private Ryan right after my dad died. So I cried.

Niebuhr talks about the Sin of Pride. One part of the sin of pride comes out of a feeling of insecurity rather than dominance. It is a self-absorption to compensate for the fact that I am insecure. The insecurity comes out of my woundedness for sure, but I compensate by chasing perfection. A pretty fruitless and self-absorbed pursuit. Of course, this pursuit is not without some beauty. I survived because of my ability to chase after being better, different than where I was from. The problem is that I am either perfect or shit. I am either worthy or not worthy at all. The dichotomy of my life is still so very strong. I would love to be able to sit with the idea that I am both saint and sinner at the same time. I am both justified and yet not yet sanctified as I live my life in reality. Niebuhr suggests, and I think I am beginning to understand, that sin and power are something that someone must understand side by side. Sin is a moving away from authentic relationship while power is a movement toward relationship, not as a negation of the individual, but in great respect for what is brought in the context of relationship, the truest expression of the authentic self. In other words, for me to be fully me, I need the other and vice versa. The sin of pride not only prevents me from seeing fully the other, but fully how the other is with me.

Good Samaritan

I don't remember the accident.

That is what is so strange about the whole event. What I do remember is what saddens me the most.

With the light green, I proceeded into the intersection. That is the last thing I remember until I was aware enough to know I was leaning on the steering wheel of my car. In almost ten minutes, not a single person checked to see if I was o.k. I was not. The first person to check on me was a firefighter. Not a single witness came forward to tell the officer what had happened.

I was taken to the local trauma center primarily because I had acute chest pain, very fuzzy memory (still do) and because of my Remicade and Chrohn's disease, I have a compromised immune system. While there are no broken bones, I am very sore. Very sore.

What is most saddening and disturbing is the lack of help provided to me. It is not the first time I have felt like the man by the side of the road. Where was my "good samaritan?" Rauschenbusch says that sin is being radically self-centered. Where is the sense of community? Could no one even spare a few minutes to report what they had seen and stay with me until help arrived? It really is symptomatic of our condition. This is the heart of sin as identified by Jesus I believe.

Though I have had a very rough time lately. I feel all the more closer to God and my family and to my call. I feel very connected to life right now. I feel myself walking toward God and community. I guess I would like community to move toward me, but the Kingdom of God is not something that just happens. I must move toward community. This life with God is a dialogue and a dance. I have lived life to much as if life happens to me rather than me living life. I feel as if I am living life now. I take authorship of my life. Yes, I wasn't helped, but I sin too and I learned the importance to walk toward those in need. May I do this for God's sake.

Faith Makes Me Well

This has been a particularly bad week for me physically. Because of this, I have had a particularly bad week emotionally. Despite the fact that I had a night of sheer delight and fun cruising New Orleans with my wife in an unexpected trip for CPE day at Notre Dame Seminary, I have not felt well. The fact that I have not felt well is really starting to get to me. I have now been on Remicade for going on four weeks and I have really seen no real results. I find myself lying alot recently about how I'm feeling. Including myself at times. I just want SO badly to feel better. Plus, it gets people off the topic for awhile. The reality though is that I'm still struggling though I am still going.

"Your faith has made you well."

I'm really searching this meaning for me. It certainly is not if I have faith in Jesus Christ, I will be cured of my Chrohn's Disease. I think it does mean that there is something about this relationship with God through Christ that offers us a space for healing. Christ offers me something that provides healing for the whole self. But, I have responsibility in this as well. There is alot I cannot change, like my disease, but there is a lot I can, like my choices in turning toward God in faith. The reality is that I haven't seen my dependence in Grace as something to be desired, but something from which to run. I have sought my own way, I have sought too often independence from God. It is the sin of pride as I understand that. The sin of not seeing myself in the proper perspective in relationship to God and others. Faith would make me well, regardless of my condition, if only I could trust. Trusting in God's grace is a process I am living in at the moment. I am beginning to understand ways in which I do trust and ways in which I do not. In other words, to accept in God's grace where I am while at the same time move toward a new way of relating beyond where I am today.

I often get caught in black/white thinking here. I understand that. I will try not to fall into that this go round. Just for the moment. The Kingdom of God may be at hand, but there are ways that I live in community with the faithful, and ways I do not. Probably always will. But my spiritual life at the moment is on the cusp of an awakening of sorts. This process, this intersection of my illness with my process is a powerful opportunity for me. My forty days so to speak in the wildnerness.

We will see where God leads me, and where I will follow.

Ready for Grace

Met my first committee last week here in Austin. My "Readiness" committee. I actually enjoyed the experience. I got a lot out of it. I guess I expected to get beat up and it didn't happen. So much for expectations.

I feel very aware of God's presence with me right now. I still believe in a self-emptying and vulnerable God, but one who does so in such a way that I do not have to. I don't have to be the sacrifice myself. I do not have to be the lamb for slaughter. I do not have to be the suffering servant. I can lead with the power I experience in God's gift and grace to me. That is perfectly acceptable. I have the gifts and strengths for this work, I don't need to lay myself upon the altar for either the expectation of abuse of the need for care. I am responsible for my own life and only my life and I am the author of my own story and I am understanding how that Grace of God is fully with me right now. I experience this reality in my daily life. I am deeply blessed by the love of God emptying for me. It gives me strength, it empowers me. It enlivens me to walk through the darkness of life. It helps me understand hope in the midst of great despair and hopelessness. I understand I have to get in the muck of life. Hell, I've lived it. But, perhaps, for really the first time in my life I really TRUST that grace is there. Sometimes it feels as if there is no light darkness cannot overcome. But I'm beginning to understand experiencially, at least for me in this moment, that perhaps, just perhaps, I may indeed see a light that no darkness can extinquish. Thanks be to God.