The Battle Is Not Yours

Conflict.  Pain.  Hurt.  Heartbreak.  Betrayal.

These tear us from within, gripping us in endless knots, shattering our self-wrought pretensions of security and confidence.  They challenge our perception that all is well and all will be well.

Sometimes it is worse when these things happen to those we love.  When we suffer we are so busy grappling with the raw emotions that we have little time to think or reflect.  In those moments, we struggle for control of ourselves or the situation, our desperation aimed toward some hoped-for goal.

If we see others in pain, we have no control.  We have no choices.  We are even more powerless than when we suffer.

That is why it is so hard to see those we love hurt.  In some ways, it strikes deeper to see wounds struck that we can never hope to heal, to see decisions made in anger, to see misunderstandings and pain erupt into a chasm of broken relationships that we cannot bridge.  We see the evils and we want to take them away, to soothe the burning heat, to wave away the stain of sins past that tinges every fresh choice and every perceived affront.  But we can do nothing.

Still we search desperately for some way that we can become the savior of the situation.  We encourage those who feel alone to rely upon us, we seek solutions to illness, we advise counseling or medication, we pray continuously for healing and conversion, we try to make others see the light because if only they could then all would be well, and on and on and on....

We do not want to admit that we can do nothing.

Yet it is not about us and what we can do.  If we are to achieve true sanity, we must let go of our need to fix things.

When we admit that we can do nothing, we set ourselves free from guilt and expectations—expectations, which so often swamp our small vessels—and allow God to be God.  He allows nothing evil out of which He cannot bring a greater good.  Where we cannot save, He can.  He is our Savior.  Many times we need only step out of His way and allow Him to do what He alone knows how to do: to heal the broken heart.

That means we stand ourselves broken and powerless.  We feel the pain that signals to us that something must be done and we simply acknowledge its presence.  We choose not to fill that hole we cannot fill.  We embrace our weakness.

For in weakness is the power of Christ made perfect, as Saint Paul said.

Somehow that paradox is true, but only because of Christ.  Our inability to do anything surrendered to Him allows Him to work.

The path of life does not follow a barter system: we do not give x to get y.  If we do, we will regret giving x and resent others who have y.  Sometimes we must hit rock bottom before we recognize this truth.  Yet when we come to the crux of it all and feel our powerlessness, we know it is true.

Even our prayers and sacrifices when performed only as a manipulation of God to make Him give us what we want—however good that for which we ask may be—are vain.  That is not love, but only self-interest disguised.

If we can let go of what we hope to gain and simply give, we can find joy even in the depths of pain.  It is the joy that rejoices in the darkness because we trust in the Ruler of all.  That trust—that surrender—allows our Lord to transform deeds once done as manipulation into gifts of love, freely given.

And there is nothing greater than love.

Your Pain for the World

"I feel very powerless.  I want to do something.  I have to do something.... I have to act in any way possible to alleviate the pain I see.  But there is an even harder task: to carry my own cross, the cross of loneliness and isolation, the cross of the rejections I experience, the cross of my depression and inner anguish.  As long as I agonize over the pain of others far away but cannot carry the pain that is uniquely mine, I may become an activist, even a defender of humanity, but not a follower of Jesus.  Somehow my bond with those who suffer oppression is made real through my willingness to suffer my loneliness.  It is a burden I try to avoid, sometimes, by worrying about others.  But Jesus says: "Come to me, all you who labor and are overburdened, and I will give you rest" (Mt 11:28).  I might think that there is an unbridgeable gap between myself and the Guatemalan wood carrier.  But Jesus carried his cross for both of us.  We belong together.  We must each take up our own cross and follow him, and so discover that we are truly brothers who learn from him who is humble and gentle of heart."

These words of Henri Nouwen, set under the heading "Willing to Suffer My Loneliness," which I copied down months ago, speak so powerfully to how I feel now as I think of the world around me.  There are the incomprehensible sufferings of all those losing homes and loved ones in natural disasters and genocides.  There are friends close to my heart struggling with loneliness and broken relationships.  So much pain.  So much heartache.

Then there is the pain in my own heart.  No matter how beautifully things fall into place, no matter how many meaningful conversations I have, no matter how much I accomplish, still it is there: the pain of separation.

For we are made for more than this.  In the words of Chesterton's Poet in The Surprise: "This is good, but something is better."

That longing for something better—that longing for union—pulls at our hearts.  Often we experience it as a deep chasm of loneliness.  We try in so many ways to fill that chasm.  We even go so far as to disguise our need to assuage our loneliness as love for others.  Yet God knows our hearts.  He knows—as do we, when we are honest with ourselves—whether we reach out to make ourselves feel better or to bring love—to bring Christ—to others.

Sometimes there is nothing we can do.  That is when the pain is greatest.

In those moments, perhaps then it is enough simply to embrace the cross that is so much ourselves and our own loneliness, our own powerlessness.  There in the bearing of that cross we can do more for the world than  could any humanitarian aid group or charitable organization, for we can unite our sufferings with Christ's passion.

As we are taught in math: what is greater than infinity?  Nothing.

God Himself is infinite.  If we unite ourselves with Him, then we are greater than anything we could sum up of our own selves.

Whatever it is then that you must suffer today, may you have the strength to bear it as your own particular cross.  For in the carrying of that cross, you can come to a mystical union with Christ and with His body, the Church spread throughout the world....

Open the Doors of Your Heart

"Beauty will save the world," said Dostoevsky.  His words may be taken in a general fashion or referring to the Creator Himself.  Either way, he speaks to a deep truth.

Gregory Wolfe supports the power of this statement in his beautiful essay titled "The Wound of Beauty" in which he defends the need for beauty.  He also writes of the power of beauty to strike us to the very depths of our being: "Beauty itself wounds us, pierces our hearts, opens us up."

If beauty wounds, then where shall we find healing?

Ultimately the source of our healing can only be found in the Incarnation.  For there the great rift between God and man is healed by the Creator becoming His own creation.

All of us are called to participate in that great work of healing through incarnating truth in our very selves.  Those of us called to be artists must take that incarnation a step further, revealing the depths of God through various mediums that reflect the core of our very selves.

Yet we artists are no less broken.

Unless we participate in the great work of redemption—the great work of healing—we fail in our vocation.  Our art becomes worthless, a merely shameful display of our talents and self-worth, an excuse for pride and vainglory.  Yet when we allow ourselves to collaborate in Christ's redemptive sacrifice, our handiwork has power beyond what we can imagine.

The question I would propose for you to ponder is this one: how does healing come through art?

I would argue that it comes through much the same way as when Christ healed.  He looked for an open heart—a heart of faith.  When He healed a man who was deaf and dumb, He said: "Ephpheta, which is, 'Be thou opened.'" (Mark 7:34)

It is through being open that we are healed.  Returning again to the theme of the wound of beauty, you can understand how it ties in here: the act of wounding is a means of making an openness.  Whether we allow that wound or whether beauty strikes us without our awareness, opening up our brokenness, we find ourselves in a perfect position to be healed because we have that openness—that vulnerability.  In so doing, we may find ourselves becoming channels of God's grace as well.

Sometimes I think our greatest challenge as artists is to embrace that vulnerability and not to flee from it.  We are often masters of flight.  We disguise our cowardice as perfectionism or scorn or pride or any manner of things.

In the end, when we allow ourselves to be powerless, we experience the freedom of true creation.  That is the paradox.  As Saint Paul said: when we are weak, then we are strong.

That experience of freedom—whether through creative work or through some other means—touches the very depths of our being.  It fills our restless hearts and we want nothing more.  For where we open ourselves to His working, we become one with Him, and He brings healing.

The presence of God hurts.  Beauty wounds.

Yet just as sometimes a bone must be re-broken to set aright or a wound opened to be drained, pain precedes healing—it opens the way.  So God sometimes hurts in order to heal.

All we need to do is open the door of our hearts.  When we have the support of those around us and see their own battle-wounds, we may find the courage to choose the glory of what feels to us like death.

For ultimately the battle for openness lies within the boundaries of our own hearts.  We must go into the desert there and wrestle with ourselves.

A seed must die to bring forth fruit.