True Authority

Pain is - in my mind - the great teacher. I have often said that we learn little or nothing from our successes. What we learn (if you want to call it that) is that whatever we just did worked. But with pain - the kind of real pain that comes at the end of a 2x4 smack across the head, or the kind that comes from deep suffering - with pain comes introspection.

When we suffer, we begin to inspect what just happened. We look at the events leading up to it, the triggers, and we inspect the reaction we had to each. We take things apart and crack the code. We begin to piece the puzzle together in new and different ways. We are opened, at last, to learning because the great teacher - pain - has spoken.

Those who have suffered - the poor, the oppressed, and the true victims of this world - know this lesson and they have a wisdom that speaks volumes of what it means to be human. They can speak with authority about what life is and about what it means to be human. Their authority is never wielded with power and cockiness. And they listen far better. I think perhaps this is why Jesus taught the poor and oppressed, and why Gandhi wove his own clothes and walked with the Untouchables.

The wisdom and character that one receives from suffering and pain is compassion. There is not artificial way to develop compassion. Do Kings and Presidents wield compassion (I am hard-pressed to find one, and alternately nauseated at the media events of former presidents hugging a widow or an appropriately cute child in the hurricane shelter) - no I think that for the most part they have no clue, because the have never suffered great pain. Richard Rohr, my teacher of late, gave a talk once called "The Authority of Those Who Suffer" and I think he nailed it. That is the real authority of "been there, done that" only it's more like "been there, ouch, got that lesson too!"

The Splendid Torch

I listen to the oldies station in Boston, and yesterday I heard one of those place-and-time specific songs that threw me right back to when I was maybe 23! I suddenly was flooded with scenes of what I was doing at that time and the choices I had in front of me. Back then I had all of my body parts in tact, schooling, opportunities and yet... it seems that I lacked the urgency to decide.

Thoreau said once that we live in the "arrogance of a tomorrow." Back in 1972 I thought I had all the time in the world. Youth is like that! I had ideas (like I do now) of writing, something I had always liked, but must have felt that there was mo much more time. I got the chance a couple of years later to co-author with my mentor and remember calling my mom the day the book arrived from the publisher with my name on it. It was too fantastic to be real! That was 1976. I think that is when I caught the bug, but I let it go dormant until just a few years ago - 2006 to be exact, when I started writing again.

We are pushing for a December deadline now - just because we said so! That is how I live now, as the author of my living. It won't happen unless I do my part. I guess the nostalgia induced by that song made me take a long look at what I hadn't done and shoulda, coulda, woulda! I don't normally do that, but I have long held as my theme a passage by GB Shaw called "the Splendid Torch." Sometimes I live it and many times I seem to have forgotten.

Shaw wrote, "This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. [geez I love that phrase!] I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no "brief candle" for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations."

Well George, I think I need to crank up the lumens to catch up for some less-than-bright times. Oh and if you are wondering, 1972 was the year of "Day by Day," "American Pie," and "Roundabout" but the song I heard yesterday, that I used to sing as I shuffled across the campus at Penn State was Bill Withers' "Use Me."