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!"