On the radio today I heard a story about an 11-year old girl with cancer. An interviewer is asking her questions and finally says, "What are those beads you're holding?"
The girl says, "We get a bead for different things we have to do at the hospital."
And the interviewer asks, "What kinds of things? I see that you have different colors."
And the girl answers, "We get a black bead for each day of chemo. A white bead for radiation treatments. A red bead when they take blood. A yellow bead for each day in the hospital. Stuff like that. When you get enough, you can make them into a necklace."
And the interviewer says, "And do you have enough for a necklace?"
And the girl, "I have five necklaces. They're in this box right here, see?"
She asks, See?
It sounds very simple. Look here... Do you see?
How could any feeling human "see" that? I see... something. Through a glass darkly. The vaguest outline, the faintest contours of this innocent child's life.
Do *you* see? Would you put yourself in the shoes of Job's accusers and dare explain that to me? To her?
What is the mode of being to account for this? Where is an answer that could on the one hand comfort her and those who love her; and on the other value this world, this life, as something precious beyond all riches, beyond all wisdom, beyond all ken.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking
dully along:
W. H. Auden
We find it crucial to discover and foster a sense of ethics because the universe will not hand it to us. Because the world is not providential, we must be provident. Only because we are mutually vulnerable are we "caught in an inescapable network of mutuality" as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. so eloquently put it.
This would not be true if the universe offered exemptions, if some of us could take a mulligan. Can I explain this to a child? Comfort her and those who love her? Of course not. All I can do is care. All I can do is acknowledge the inescapable network and the paltry inadequacy of this answer.
So what is the mode of being? Perhaps it begins with acceptance of the universe as it is and my place in it. This is not agreement; nor is it surrender. It is understanding.
When I lived in Auburn I had a spiritual mentor who was a Buddhist. He taught me one of the most valuable lessons I have ever learned. I had taken to him a social problem I was having. Certainly it was not as dire as cancer, but I was losing sleep. I was losing friends. I could see no action of my own that had precipitated it. During our conversation I asked in exasperation, "Why is this happening to me?" Without a moment's hesitation he asked, "Why not you?"
Post a Comment