Weekly Soul. Week 4 - Suffering
Today's meditation from Weekly Soul: Fifty-two Meditations on Meaningful, Joyful, and Peaceful Living by Dr. Frederic Craigie.
-4-
Although the world
is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.
Helen Keller
The story of the man being kind to his
challenged wife introduces a vital element in the idea of miracles. Thinking of
miracles as “objects of wonder,” calling forth “awe and admiration,” making you
smile… does not presume a rosy and gleeful understanding of life.
To the contrary. Life entails suffering,
and it is perhaps in the setting of suffering that the ability to pause and
behold at least the shadow of the miracle can be most life-giving.
As we move toward the end of the second
decade of this century, the cohort of women and men who survived the Holocaust
is dwindling, but their powerful stories remain. Edith Herz was born in 1926 to
a comfortable Jewish family in Germany. They lived in Worms, which had been a
center of Jewish culture for hundreds of years. Her parents operated a small
and successful business, and their extended family enjoyed the same
opportunities of community life, travel, and spiritual practice as other
Europeans of the time.
With the rise of the Nazi movement, this
began to change. The coordinated attacks on the Jewish community of Kristallnacht—the Night of Shattered
Glass in November, 1938—witnessed the desecration of over a thousand
synagogues, the destruction of several thousand Jewish businesses, and the
internment of 30,000 Jews. Edith’s father, a decorated German veteran of the
Great War, her mother, and Edith were transported to Thereseinstadt, which was
a labor camp and holding area for Jews who were later moved to death camps to
the east. Edith’s father died there, and in the following months, Edith and her
mother were sent to Birkenau/Auschwitz, where it is estimated that over a
million people perished, and subsequently to Stutthof concentration camp, from
which they were liberated by the Russian army in January 1945. In addition to
Edith’s father, 16 uncles, aunts, and cousins had been killed.
Edith uses the word miracle to
describe a number of remarkable events that allowed her and her mother to
survive. With dozens of other women, they are herded into the gas chamber, and
it malfunctions. She is called before Josef Mengele, and he waves her to the
right, to labor, rather than to the left, to death. A German officer on
Christmas break offers her a morsel of food.
More broadly, she credits her survival to
her partnership with a remarkable mother and to their shared spirit of “hope”
and “optimism.” “What good would it do,” she asks, “to whine and cry? None. Those
who did, perished.” She and her mother maintained a sacred commitment to be
together, supporting one another in the inevitable times when one of them felt
like giving up.
The world is full of suffering and of the
overcoming of it. Is this not a miracle?
Reflection
- Think of a time when you have
made your way past suffering. How did this happen? Do you see some
miracle, some object of wonder?
- Notice how you address times
of challenge or disappointment in the coming week. What, indeed, would the
miracle look like… how would you want to be addressing times of challenge
or disappointment?
Author
Helen Keller
(1880-1968)
is surely legendary in her overcoming the suffering of deafness and blindness
with the support of her teacher, Anne Sullivan. Appropriate to our subject, the
theatrical and film rendition of the relationship of Sullivan with Keller was
called The Miracle Worker.
Keller graduated from Radcliffe College in
1904, the first deaf/blind person to earn a bachelor’s degree. Her adult life
consisted of advocacy for causes related to disabilities and widespread
political activity, helping to found the American Civil Liberties Union, and
speaking on behalf of women’s suffrage, socialist causes, and international
peacemaking.
The quotation comes from Keller’s 1903
book, Optimism. Readers might appreciate the larger context:
I know what evil is. Once or twice I have
wrestled with it, and for a time felt its chilling touch on my life; so, I
speak with knowledge when I say that evil is of no consequence, except as a
sort of mental gymnastic. For the very reason that I have come in contact with
it, I am more truly an optimist. I can say with conviction that the struggle
which evil necessitates is one of the greatest blessings. It makes us strong,
patient, helpful men and women. It lets us into the soul of things and teaches
us that although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the
overcoming of it. My optimism, then, does not rest on the absence of evil but
on a glad belief in the preponderance of good and a willing effort always to
cooperate with the good, that it may prevail. I try to increase the power God
has given me to see the best in everything and everyone, and make that Best a
part of my life. The world is sown with good; but unless I turn my glad
thoughts into practical living and till my own field, I cannot reap a kernel of
the good.
Edith
Pagelson (b. 1926)
eventually came to America and has been blessed in relationships with two
husbands who have passed on. She aims to strike a balance between remembering
and speaking about the Holocaust and living a full current life. Her story,
written in collaboration with my colleague and friend Ronnie Weston, is
available in Against All Odds: A Miracle
of Holocaust Survival (Rockland, Maine: Maine Authors Publishing, 2012).
For more posts by and about Fred and his book, click HERE.
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