ON PAIN

My cousin Diane, whose parents have both passed, mentioned recently that cleaning out her dad’s work shop was going to be “a new level of heartbreak and hell.”

It reminded me that pain is often the prerequisite to learning, understanding, and new awakening. But it is never without sacrifice and internal turmoil.

Khalil Gibran, whose poetry is handily categorized by emotion, wrote this “On Pain:”

“Your pain

is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.

Even as

the stone of the fruit

must break,

that its heart

may stand in the sun,

so must you know pain.”

I shared Gibran’s passage with Diane, and was warmed by her deeper wisdom relating to our Greek immigrant grandparents:

“I love the K. Gibran quote! The stone breaks, the plant sprouts and eventually, blossoms and produces fruit or joy. Think of the pain our grandparents endured, so we could blossom and enjoy life without the pain they lived through.”

Diane is the same cousin whose 7th grade students blossomed under her influence (see “Weakening Yet Strengthening” https://samiwolf.blogspot.com/2018/05/weakening-yet-strengthening.html?m=1).

She has known pain in recent years through the loss of both her parents and her brother. She was caregiver to all, and has been left with a legacy equally balanced between the weight of estate-settling responsibility and the nostalgia of family tradition. Yet our daily correspondence is always a source of inspiration to me. She seeks light, life, and joy as a steward who immediately shares them lovingly and willingly with all those whom she encounters.

Bishop Fulton Sheen once depicted the disruption in the natural order of creation as a place of pain from which a new starting point could be found. After a devastating forest fire, new sprouts show the promise of life. After an earthquake, the earth’s underlayment mends itself anew and rich soil is available for planting. After a relationship crumbles, pieces of ourselves are salvaged and repositioned, stronger and more resilient.

So pain can bear fruit in our lives, after all. It teaches and it guides. We need only be open to its lessons.

Where is your fire... your earthquake... your crumbling relationship? Where is your moment of heartbreak and hell? Have you met pain, endured its sting, and experienced a conversion to something fruitful? Consider who you were before, and who you became after, that pain. You may be surprised at what you discover... that the journey through pain, suffering, and fear, culminated in sprouting, learning, and growing.

May you fully own that journey through pain, and may you now live into the inner joy which becomes its reward.