Toward a Pedagogy of Suffering

In an article appearing in the Clinical Law Review, 19, 2 (Spring, 2013) and entitled, "Painful Injustices: Encountering Social Suffering in Clinical Legal Education," Law professor Sarah Buhler proposes a "pedagogy of suffering" aimed at helping clients and lawyers address the sources of social suffering to the end that larger questions of injustice might also be addressed.  In her conclusion, Buhler writes,

It is important for clinical law teachers to be prepared, during class discussions, case rounds, or routine supervisory interactions with students, to critically interrogate dominant discourse about suffering, and to urge students to ask questions about the proper terrain of legal practice. This may require clinicians to push students into examining their own emotional responses, and to help them to develop a critical vocabulary for understanding and contextualizing these experiences. A critical pedagogy of suffering would entail a deliberate challenge to the tendency to suppress or divert emotional responses within the clinical classroom, and to encourage students to understand their own sadness or distress about their clients’ stories as resources for thinking about larger questions of justice and injustice in society.

In the Christian tradition rooted in Judaism, we have from the beginning recognized the instructional value of suffering.  Traditional theology held that God is the source of all suffering, which is intended not so much to punish sin as to offer sinners the opportunity to change their ways.  In more recent times and in many Christian circles, the idea that God purposefully causes suffering in specific instances has lost favor, but we cannot escape the underlying fact that suffering is a part of the world that God has created.  God does not kill innocent children, yet their deaths are somehow encompassed within divine providence.  And suffering still has its value, if it is not so painful that healing cannot take place.

One of the key uses of our set of spiritual practices is to focus our attention on the lessons we can learn from our suffering and that of those around us.  Prayer and meditation, as key examples, are thus not ways to avoid suffering or escape its consequences.  They are the means rather for processing suffering, and as we engage in them we learn that frequently we are complicit in our own suffering.  We are a source of suffering in others.  The suffering itself is simply a physiological, including mental and emotional, phenomenon.  What it can teach us if we are mindful of it is, ultimately, spiritual and vastly important to our well-being.

Paying Attention

Suffering in all of its manifold manifestations lies at the heart of the human experience.  It is physical, emotional, and spiritual.  The world with its natural, social, political, and economic crises and processes causes us to suffer.  Others hurt us.  We ourselves are the source of a goodly portion of our own suffering.

Faith in Christ does not prevent suffering.  Indeed, people of Christian faith often suffer because they are attuned to the suffering around them—at least somewhat.  What faith does do is to help us process suffering in a way that breaks its cycles.  It helps us to better see, however imperfectly, the ways in which we perpetuate our suffering and that of others around us.  It gives us tools for better managing suffering.  Sometimes, it even allows the Holy Spirit to wend its healing way through us into situations of pain, reducing the pain and bringing resolutions that are a foreshadowing of the Kingdom.

When we ground ourselves in faith that is even somewhat open to the Holy Spirit, our faith helps us to creatively pay attention to our suffering and that of others in a way that removes us from the deadly cycles of hurt.

Other religious faiths than Christianity also provide ways through pain and suffering.  We don't have a corner on the market.  The insight of our particular  faith, however, is that like Christ we have to walk our way through the Valley of the Shadow.  We can't reach the high peaks and grand vistas without walking through the forests, the swamps, and all of the other obstacles on the Way.  The cross is not the end of the journey, but it is the way to the end—not something we seek but something we endure and learn from.

It remains unclear to me, at least, why the Creator would construct our reality in this way.  But, somehow, what we are to become is intimately tied to what we must suffer through to become what we are being created to be.  The trick is to not be defeated by suffering, not rendered insensitive by it, and learn what lessons we can from it.  Like a child who has to learn painfully not to stick her hand in a fire, so too does our safety lies in the way through our suffering.  The story we Christians put our trust in is the story of Jesus, the Galilean who walked that way with and for us.  Amen.

Sandy Hook Elementary: What to Say?

This morning, I will take my usual place as pastor at the front of the sanctuary.  The sermon I planned to preach is written and even posted (here) at our congregational website.  Friday is my day off, and I usually turn on the news at some point in the morning to watch the news; and day before yesterday I heard the first brief break-ins about a school shooting, no details.  Through the day, like many of you my readers, I checked back in as the details unfolded, and it became clear to me that the planned sermon will not do, ignoring this tragedy will not do.  But, what is there to say?  Platitudes, Jesus-loves-you-this-I-know will not do.  Teachers sit in our pews.  Parents and grandparents sit in our pews.  Their children grace our worship with their presence.  Platitudes will not do.  The scripture lesson I planned to use will not do.

To be honest, I don't even want to bother with Christmas this morning.

Well, but maybe that's not true.  The point I've been working on this Advent is that Christmas is really about resurrection and creation, and I can make a pretty strong argument for that point from the opening stories in the Gospel of Luke, which have been my texts.  In the very first story of Luke's "birth narratives," God blesses barren, aged Elizabeth and her husband, Zechariah, with a child, John the Baptist ( Luke 1:5-25).  Picking up on an Old Testament theme, Luke begins with a dead, lifeless womb and a conception in that womb in what amounts to a resurrection.  Life comes from death.  In my first sermon this Advent (here), I drew on a survey of recent events in the local and regional press to make the point that barrenness is not merely a biblical category.  It is a reality that touches us, sometimes deeply and painfully.

The tragic events in Connecticut illustrates the point in a way that leaves us all profoundly sad and feeling just a little helpless.  If something like this can happen in Newtown...  Well, it is only about a four-and-a-half hour drive to Newtown from Lowville.

So, I plan to start by reading the names of all of those who died Friday morning and share the text of the President's remarks (here) with the congregation.  I will continue with Psalm 147:1-11, esp. verse 3, which reads, "He heals the broken-hearted and bandages their wounds." (NRSV)  The President concluded his brief remarks by alluding to this verse.  And then what?

As pastor and preacher I must deny the idea that God caused this thing to happen, which idea I have already heard alluded to by at least one observer.  The question, then, is where was God when these events unfolded?  Some will ask, why wasn't God there?  As best as I can answer that question, God was there.  God was in the cowering teacher, frightened to death, whose first thought was for her students.  God was in the officers who entered that school building not knowing what danger they might face, but going in anyway.  God was in the sad, shaken voice of Governor Malloy when he had to tell the remaining parents whose children had not been returned to them that their children would not be going home with them—not ever again.  God was in the tears of our President and in the tears of so many others—in our tears. God is in the outpouring of sympathy for the victims including the family of the shooter. God is in our sadness prompting us to learn a better way than this.

The point of the Cross, as we Christians have come to understand it, is that God is not above our suffering but painfully shares in it.  So, we come back to the fundamental nature of God as best we understand it.  God is Beyond, and no miniscule event on Planet Earth touches the Creator & Lord of the universe.  God is also Present and suffers the suffering of all who are involved in this horrendous event.

So, I guess I will read this posting to the congregation.

Jesus said,

 "Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest." (Matthew 11:28).

Amen.

Just an Accident

The community of Lowville, NY, has been rocked recently by the apparent drowning of a well-liked custodian from the local school—apparent because his body has not been recovered, which makes the boating accident doubly tragic.  The custodian was out fishing with another custodian on Lake Ontario, and their boat capsized in storm waters just one hundred yards or so from shore.  One man lived, one has apparently died.  Inevitably, in a generally conservative, fairly religious community like Lowville, the thought comes "naturally" that God was somehow involved.  One can find passages from the Bible that would support such an assertion.

As a pastor, I have to wrestle with the question of why these things happen more frequently than I like.  My faith in God in Christ simply does not allow me to accept the assertion that this accident was God's will.  In the Book of Genesis, God became angry with rebellious humanity and wrecked havoc on the world with a flood (Genesis 7-9), and at the end of the story of that flood God promised never to do such a thing again.  God promised never to destroy us by way of cataclysmic events, which I take to be large or small—the whole planet or two guys out fishing.  In a modern world view, what this means is that our divinely constructed universe is not dominated by a whimsical, distant, and emotionally distrubed god who wills some to suffer, others to prosper.

It was just an accident.  Accidents can be caused by any number of factors, often more than just one.  Sometimes, they are fatal.  More usually, we are thankful that we escaped with no or little consequences.  Some accidents become stories that we tell time and again—about the time this happened & that almost happened & how lucky we were.  It was just an accident.

So, then, God is not involved at all?  That is not what I mean.  I believe as a matter of faith that God is present in healing, in knitting the wounds of grief, and in the ways in which people come together in the face of death and hurt.  God is not present in our world as a stern, judgmental parent-figure who sits on the rim of the universe pulling strings to punish us for supposed sins.  That is a childish, if widely held view of God.  God is Present in our lives as Spirit, a healing, mending, creative presence that brings good out of chaos.  The Spirit is the silver lining we affirm to be found in every storm cloud.  God does not execute our loved ones.  God is the One who is present in our tears, sharing in the pain, and working quietly to bring our hearts ease.  I don't know why things are this way, but I do believe that embedded in it all is a larger purpose that is evolving us away from chaos and toward Eden and that in that larger purpose we find healing.  Amen.

JX 594: A Name to Remember

Medical researchers in Canada have completed an initial clinical trial of a bio-engineered virus, JX 594, which has the ability to replicate in and potentially destroy cancer cells anywhere in a patient's body, not just where the cancer is known to be.  In a group of 23 test patients with various stages of cancer, JX 594 proved that it could replicate inside of cancer cells while leaving all other cells alone, and the patients suffered only mild colds as a side effect.  More trials have to follow, but this viral therapy may well revolutionize and simplify the treatment of cancer.  JX 594 can apparently be engineered to attack different kinds of cancer cells in a way tailor made for patients.  This is incredibly good news (reported here).

Things like cancer, which causes untold amounts of human suffering and sadness in our world, remain one of the most difficult things to deal with theologically.  Why did God's good creation lead to things like this?  Suffering and sadness, however, seem to be related somehow to the divinely structured evolution of life on Earth.  We know from personal experiences that pain and loss can have beneficial affects.  We grow, we learn, and sometimes we find deeper spiritual life through such things.  Why it has to be this way, we don't know.

If, however, we are going to "blame God" for all of this suffering and sadness, then it is also only fair to understand that God also created (and continues to create) us with the potential for medicine—for being increasingly able to reduce suffering and bring relief to those in pain.  Evidently (or, better, evidentially), the capacity to overcome diseases is engineered in us as a potential we are more and more realizing.  And when we also realize that nature itself provides the basis of many medical treatments including many herbs and plants—well, if we're going to blame God for allowing the suffering, it is only fair that we praise God for graciously engineering in us and our world answers to our suffering.

The God who built grief into us has also built joy, and there seems to be a connection between them that we don't understand very well at all.  It's worth wondering, however, if our joy would be so deep, so meaningful if we had never known grief.  Are not joy and sadness partners in the dance of life, together drawing us to a deeper place within ourselves?  Is that place not wisdom, which remains one of our most precious human gifts?  This is not to say that we should not seek to conquer cancer with things like JX 594, but rather to say that in doing so we are heading in the direction set us for us from the beginning—the peaceable Kingdom of God.  Amen.