How else but through a broken heart|
p237 Psychologist Carl Jung said "all neurosis is a substitute for legitimate suffering." As a culture, America lacks a deep understanding of the value of suffering. Contrary to popular opinion, there are times when allowing ourselves to suffer is the only way to get through pain. American popular culture is a cult of pleasure, which is an inappropriate response to deep unhappiness. The happiest life in an authentic life, which is not necessarily one of constant delight. Our obsessive pursuit of entertainment and cheap pleasure is both a response to and a masking of deep unhappiness. When, after fifteen minutes, the pain comes back -- no matter how much fun we had and how many games we bought -- we should do more than just seek to numb it. It's important that our bones hurt when we break them. Otherwise how would we know that they are broken..... you don't just take pain killers, you have to reset the bone. |
The healing of evil -- scientifically or otherwise -- can be accomplished only by the love of individuals. A willing sacrifice is required. The individual healer must allow his or her own soul to become the battleground. He or she must sacrificially absorb the evil.
Then what prevents the destruction of that soul? If one takes the evil itself into one's heart, like a spear, how can one's goodness still survive? Even if the evil is vanquished thereby, will not the good be also? What will have been achieved beyond some meaningless trade-off?
I cannot answer this in language other than mystical. I can say only that there is a mysterious alchemy whereby the victim becomes the victor. As C.S. Lewis wrote: 'When a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards.'
I do not know how this occurs. But I know that it does. I know that good people can deliberately allow themselves to be pierced by the evil of others -- to be broken thereby yet still somehow survive and not succumb. Whenever this happens there is a slight shift in the balance of power in the world.
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In the Book of Enoch, as in other apocalyptic writings and in rabbinical sources, one concept plays a very important role – that of "the birth pangs of the messiah."
The beginning of liberation lies in man’s capacity to suffer…….. If a man has lost his capacity to suffer, he has also lost the capacity to change. Erich Fromm |
extremity, but rather by touching both at once. (Pascal) |
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To Archbishop Stepinac Courage is a fabric So woven of the soul It shrinks with fear, stretches When straining toward a goal. But when in eyes it glows, Awaiting tyrants' rod, It is of mystic birth, Holding a tryst with God. Marianne Williamson: The Healing Of America. NY: Simon & Schuster, 1977. |