Here are two pictures of a White Pine tree that's across the stream, across the road and up the hill on the opposite side, about a quarter to a half mile away. A local fellow, a kind of mountain man, pointed it out to me a few years ago while talking on the chapel steps about a few projects he was taking on around here.
He said, "See that pine tree way up there. Notice how it stands alone and is much taller than any other tree; it's a survivor." He then went on to tell about the storms, the insects, the loggers, the blights, that could have taken the great tree down over the more than one hundred years it has lived up there. I look for that tree first thing as I step out the door each morning - viewing it through fog, heavy rain, heavy snow, low and bright sunlight, clear sky, cloudy sky. It's there.
We can survive an automobile accident. We can survive cancer. The Weather Channel sometimes features stories of people who survived being lost and near death in deserts or mountain ranges, or those who survived tsunamis, tornadoes, hurricanes and earthquakes. We're familiar with the term Holocaust Survivor.
Then there is that kind of survival which is more interior - the challenges and life-suffering that we come through and find ourselves intact. We can survive growing up in an alcoholic home; a relationally dysfunctional home. We can survive a bad marriage, physical, emotional or sex abuse (which is physical and emotional). We can survive poverty, long loneliness and depression. Like the White Pine on the mountain ridge; I'm still standing!
Hindsight is 20/20, they say. This kind of struggle through suffering reveals what I'm made of. I realize I have strengths and capacities I may not have recognized at the time. I might have gotten into the habit of calling myself names: I'm weak. I'm stupid. I'm a loser. It's likely time to cut that out.
Surviving like the White Pine, is perhaps an invitation to deeper gratitude. God surely, but also the people (few or many) who walked me through to healing and restoration. I do have a choice; I don't have to be a victim. I'd say a really alive person is a grateful person. I have an interior list of savior-type folks who come to mind most every day.
More than a few people say through the life-struggles and suffering, "I feel God has abandoned me." I'd suggest that reflects I've been living with an idea or image of God that needs evolving. There is nothing in Christianity that says, "Stick with God and you won't suffer."
A devout parishioner was in the hospital to begin treatment for an evasive cancer. When I visited, I let her speak first, lest I lapse into an unhelpful pious platitude. Instead, I said simply, "What do you have to say about all of this?" She answered: "I realize that there is no getting around suffering; suffering is part of it."
And the Christian would say, that it's precisely in that suffering that we discover God in new depth. When I was a hospital chaplain I'd see mothers sitting in the newborn intensive care for days, (even weeks and months) watching, hovering, reaching into the incubator to touch. God is like that. I remember at the height of the AIDS crisis, a time full of terrible fear, stigma and unknowns, three college-aged "kids" standing in love and close solidarity around their otherwise abandoned friend who was near death. The white curtain surrounding us made a kind of chapel. God is like that.
The White Pine invites a meditation.
We can survive an automobile accident. We can survive cancer. The Weather Channel sometimes features stories of people who survived being lost and near death in deserts or mountain ranges, or those who survived tsunamis, tornadoes, hurricanes and earthquakes. We're familiar with the term Holocaust Survivor.
Then there is that kind of survival which is more interior - the challenges and life-suffering that we come through and find ourselves intact. We can survive growing up in an alcoholic home; a relationally dysfunctional home. We can survive a bad marriage, physical, emotional or sex abuse (which is physical and emotional). We can survive poverty, long loneliness and depression. Like the White Pine on the mountain ridge; I'm still standing!
Hindsight is 20/20, they say. This kind of struggle through suffering reveals what I'm made of. I realize I have strengths and capacities I may not have recognized at the time. I might have gotten into the habit of calling myself names: I'm weak. I'm stupid. I'm a loser. It's likely time to cut that out.
Surviving like the White Pine, is perhaps an invitation to deeper gratitude. God surely, but also the people (few or many) who walked me through to healing and restoration. I do have a choice; I don't have to be a victim. I'd say a really alive person is a grateful person. I have an interior list of savior-type folks who come to mind most every day.
More than a few people say through the life-struggles and suffering, "I feel God has abandoned me." I'd suggest that reflects I've been living with an idea or image of God that needs evolving. There is nothing in Christianity that says, "Stick with God and you won't suffer."
A devout parishioner was in the hospital to begin treatment for an evasive cancer. When I visited, I let her speak first, lest I lapse into an unhelpful pious platitude. Instead, I said simply, "What do you have to say about all of this?" She answered: "I realize that there is no getting around suffering; suffering is part of it."
And the Christian would say, that it's precisely in that suffering that we discover God in new depth. When I was a hospital chaplain I'd see mothers sitting in the newborn intensive care for days, (even weeks and months) watching, hovering, reaching into the incubator to touch. God is like that. I remember at the height of the AIDS crisis, a time full of terrible fear, stigma and unknowns, three college-aged "kids" standing in love and close solidarity around their otherwise abandoned friend who was near death. The white curtain surrounding us made a kind of chapel. God is like that.
The White Pine invites a meditation.
