Prayer: Holding the Pain

The frequency of tragedy and human pain in recent weeks has felt overwhelming to me. I find that I’m still praying for one thing – and the persons impacted – when the next thing happens . . . bombings in Boston . . . explosions in West, Texas . . . floods in the Midwest . . . tornadoes in Oklahoma . . . devastating fires in my hometown of Houston, Texas.

And these crises are merely the tip of the devastation . . . they cannot completely account for the daily violence and massive upset that modern life brings all over the world.

I’ve said before, and I’ll say again, I often don’t know how to pray. I pray for comfort, of course, and healing and strength. But I also don’t always have words to pray.

This past Sunday morning in our Contemplative Worship, Rev. Melissa Maher gave voice both to our desire to pray for those in need, and to the difficulty we have in knowing what to pray. Sometimes, like Sunday as Melissa led us, I simply picture a person’s face or a situation, and whisper, “Mercy.” Other times, I’ll pray silently. I may cup my hands and try to hold those who are hurting out to God.

A couple of weeks ago, in the middle of these tragedies, I came upon another prayer. I borrowed it from Psalm 13. I prayed it, both personally and publicly, in the days after the first tornado swept through Moore, Oklahoma. It occurred to me that for people who feel devastated and in the pits of pain, their grief and difficulty seems all-consuming. It feels like lugging around a huge sack of pain . . . and often, the sheer energy needed to carry around the sack of hurt keeps persons from making decisions, or taking the next step toward life.

So it seemed right for me to tell God that for a few seconds, I would carry the pain of folks who were suffering, in that case, from the tornado’s devastation. I would try to hold their pain. That was my intention. Then, I borrowed the words of Psalm 13 to help me carry that pain. That psalm, in The Book of Psalms (Stephen Mitchell) goes like this:

How long will this pain go on, Lord, this grief I can hardly bear?
How long will anguish grip me and agony wring my mind?
Light up my eyes with your presence; let me feel your love in my bones.
Keep me from losing myself in ignorance and despair.
Teach me to be patient, Lord; teach me to be endlessly patient.
Let me trust that your love enfolds me when my heart feels desolate and dry.
I will sing to the Lord at all times, even from the depths of pain.

First, I told God that as best I could, I wanted to hold the pain of those impacted by the tornado. Then, as best I could, I intentionally held their pain for a few moments. And I used this psalm to help me do it. I prayed its words on behalf of people I didn’t know. I prayed it with them and for them.

It has occurred to me that carrying another person's pain puts us in unique relation with them that other forms of prayer cannot. It puts us with them, in a very unique kind of communion with them. In a very intense way, we are in union with them for a few moments.

Of course, this is the kind of thing God does on our behalf all the time.

So I commend this prayer to you. There will be more tragedy, more bad news to be sure. Even for those of us who are miles away from the difficulty, prayer puts us on the front lines.

Good and Bad Pain . . . with a Little Rilke Thrown In

Last week several of us round-tabled about pain, gathered around the idea that perhaps there are such things as good pain and bad pain. My friend Peter Johns came up with some insightful analogies and included them last week in his blog. It's worth reading. You can read Peter's thoughts at this address:

http://edensong.blogspot.com/2012/01/lessons-from-gym.html

As a result of the open and honest discussion among soul-friends and fellow pilgrims, I was pushed to come to my own sense of what pain is and how I either step into it or avoid it. I realize that I don't like pain any more than the next person. And it's not always easy for me to differentiate emotional pain from spiritual pain, physical pain from mental pain. Often, especially when I am in the midst of it, pain is pain, and all the philosophizing or psychologizing about it in the world does not make it better. When I'm in the midst of it, I just want to cry out and make it go away.

I suppose in some things I have a pretty high pain threshold. I've been surprised from time to time, for instance, when doctors have said to me in the midst of pain or bad health, "How are you still standing this?" Then, at other times, the mere sight of a needle while I'm sitting in the chemo chair is enough to put me on the floor. I don't get it, but that represents the wide spectrum of my experience and tolerance of pain.

And I do recognize that I am largely shaped by my Western cultural heritage that insinuates that all pain is bad, that it is to be relieved, medicated or dispersed by any means possible. Our cultural emblem is "onward and upward," as if anything that holds us back from success, achievement, and prosperity must be bad. As a people, we don't have much tolerance for pain, for difficulty or for struggle.

The stories we tell in the corporate world are stories of success, accomplishment, and getting ahead.

The stories we tell in the ecclesial (church) world are the stories of the pain turned to glory, struggle that turned to victory. We have little heart-space for stories of perpetual struggle . . . for stories that do not end up with gold medals in the end . . . for stories that do not end with a heart-warming, inspirational moral.

I believe that most of us will endure a little pain only if we feel promised that it will not last long, or that it will somehow be turned to glory, or that we will be rewarded for it with some kind of earthly or celestial reward.

The difficult, wrenching spiritual discipline is to step into pain, to live in it, and perhaps to embrace it, even if we are not promised an end to it or a pleasing outcome to it. Our spiritual teachers for centuries have reminded us that in order to live a life of soul, that is a life in which we are our most authentic, God-created selves, we must make a downward journey -- often imaged as a "descent." That downward journey is most always traumatic, deathly, and painful (either physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually).

So after last week's discussion, and Peter's helpful meditation, I remembered this poem by Rainer Maria Rilke. It has spoken to me for many years, especially in the difficult days of my life, the days when I have cried out, "Where are you, God? Where are you in all this hurt?!?!"

Read it a couple of times. Visualize the image Rilke paints with words . . . a massive rock . . . a vein of ore . . . the terrible darkness . . . the pressing in . . . the weight of the pain like stone. . . .


It feels as though I make my way
through massive rock
like a vein of ore
alone, encased.

I am so deep inside it
I can’t see the path or any distance:
everything is close
and everything closing in on me
has turned to stone.

Since I still don’t know enough about pain,
this terrible darkness makes me small.
If it’s you, though –

press down hard on me, break in
that I may know the weight of your hand,
and you, the fullness of my cry.


[Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, trans. by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy (New York: Riverhead Books, 1996), 127.]


I am drawn especially to Rilke's line, "I still don't know enough about pain . . ." I confess, that even after 53 years . . . numerous heart-breaks, vocational struggles, disease, years of soul-work . . . I still don't know enough about pain.

And maybe in the end, what Rilke most wants is what I most want . . . to know that somehow God is present in the pain . . . and for God to hear me when I cry.