I don’t usually treat this blog like, well, a blog, but I want to delay our usually scheduled essay to tell you that Jon Dee Graham—who I’ve written about a couple of times here and who is both a genuinely great musician and a genuinely good human being—was recently in a serious car accident on the way home from an out-of-town gig. Please hold him and his family in your thoughts and prayers.
I also have info on helping him and his family with the hospital bills—I’ve sent something, and I’d invite you to do the same. Heinz Geissler, Jon Dee’s manager, sent this information: Donations toward medical & living expenses may be sent through PayPal to this account:
jdg@chickrockentertainment.com
Cards, as well as checks & money orders (payable to Jon Dee Graham) may be mailed to:
Jon Dee Graham c/o Heinz GeisslerTexas Music Group805 West Avenue, Suite 1Austin, TX 78701
You can check MySpace for updates to Jon Dee’s condition, and should I hear anything personally, I’ll try to let you know.
When something like this accident happens—particularly when something like this happens to someone who has already suffered—it brings up the usual cosmic questions about the fairness of the universe or the fairness of God. That question, of course, emerges from our expectation that the universe is somehow fair, or, even, that it is largely oriented around our convenience and enjoyment. I’m imagining, as I write this, the notion that life is some sort of cosmic amusement park we deserve to enjoy, since we’ve already paid our admission.
I should note as a rash generalization that this is a very Western view of things, and that other wisdom traditions don’t necessarily believe things are always meant to go our way. In Buddhist teaching, the understanding that life is made up of suffering is the First Noble Truth” “Life is dukkha.” The word dukkha can be translated “suffering,” but also “unpleasantness” and other things besides. In the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta (where you’ll notice that dukkha is translated “stressful”), the Buddha teaches a group of monks that
Birth is stressful, aging is stressful, death is stressful; sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair are stressful; association with the unbeloved is stressful, separation from the loved is stressful, not getting what is wanted is stressful.
All of this seems true enough, as we pause to reflect, but all the same, we persist in our feeling that the universe owes us something better, that we deserve to be happy—especially if we have done everything right, if we’ve already suffered, or if we possess some of the things we believe should buffer us from suffering and stress.
Part of our acceptance of these stories comes from our simply being alive in Western culture in the 21st Century—particularly those of us who live in America. Lots of elements of American culture encourage us to imagine that we are in control of our lives—rugged individualism is an American virtue, after all—while the formative myths of American rags-to-riches success stories encourage us to think that making money and achieving personal happiness are a vital part of what we’re supposed to be doing while we ride the planet.
Let’s start with secular stories: The Myth of Progress has been a potent story throughout the Modern era, perpetuating the ideas that science, knowledge, technology are going to save us all, make us all happy. N.T Wright suggests that modern faith in “automatic progress” has grown out of the secular narratives of “technological achievement, medical advancement, Romantic pantheism, Hegelian progressive Idealism and social Darwinism,” concepts that created the climate both private and public in which most people in the West lived—and continue to live—out their lives. [1]
And in America, in particular, where our Declaration of Independence guarantees us rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, happiness is elevated to an absolute good. Our advertising, popular culture, and even our faith stories reinforce it. We seek it—and if we do things right, we can have it. Some of you are familiar with the shotgun wedding of capitalism and religion some call the Prosperity Gospel, where people of faith are assured that God will reward them monetarily if they do the right things. I think it’s an abomination. But still, many of us believe in stories, whether sacred or secular, that if we play by the rules, do what we’re supposed to, work hard, believe (I’m channeling Bill Clinton’s old stump speech, I notice), then we will be blessed, because we deserve it.
But, as you have noticed, whether it’s an uncaring universe or God at the center of your belief system, things just don’t always work that way. We live in a world where death, illness, and tragedy are part of the natural order, although many of our stories encourage us to imagine that they aren’t. Violent men (I like to use inclusive language , but, damn it, it’s almost always men) will kill innocent people, and that’s the way it is, the way it has always been. Storms and droughts will kill other innocents. None of us, if we survive long enough, are going to live lives unmarked by real loss.
And all of us are going to die, and that includes me and everyone I love. Some of us will die “well,” surrounded by loved ones at the end of a long, full life; some will die suddenly, unexpectedly, or horribly. We don’t get to choose.
In fact, where suffering is concerned, we rarely get to choose, and sometimes even the things we do choose lead to loss and grief.
Whatever your theology might be, whatever your view of God, life on this earth is transitory, and we certainly do not control when or how life ends any more, ultimately, then we’ve controlled many of the events leading up to that end. So in a world where we will always eventually lose the things that matter to us (like our lives and the lives of those we love) a better question than “Why do these things happen?” might be “Where is God when we experience suffering and loss?” If I can imagine that God is with me—and not somehow absent—in times of tragedy, my grief becomes much more bearable.
Religion matters for our healthy lives on this planet not because of any notions of the afterlife, about which I remain skeptical because we know so little, but because it is valuable to us in the here and now, and the faith communities that should be a healthy part of a faith tradition can accompany us as we suffer. I have been outside of a faith tradition and I have been alone, and I know how important it is to be loved and accompanied. (And, of course, atheists and agnostics can be supported and loved by communities as well, although my point is that faith communities are founded around the notions of love and service, and should, when they do the work they’re called to, be such communities as a matter of course.)
Life is suffering. And it’s also tedium. And it’s also joy.
Sometimes we feel completely alone. But my faith tradition suggests that we are never alone, even when we suffer. The Psalms, which have long been a source of comfort for people in hard times, sometimes suggest that God is going to fix everything to our satisfaction, the story we long to believe. But when we read all the Psalms, we see that some of them leave us in the dark, lonely as the moon on a cloudless night. Walter Brueggemann writes that
The use of these “psalms of darkness” may be judged by the world to be acts of unfaith and failure, but for the trusting community, their use is an act of bold faith, albeit a transformed faith . . . . it insists that the world must be experienced as it is and not in some pretended way . . . . it is bold because it insists that all such experiences of disorder are a proper subject for discourse with God. [2]
The world is the way it is, not the way we wish it were. And still, it is beautiful. And the Psalms—all of them—insist that God accompanies us, even when broken things are not mended, even when people die, even when we lose the things we most wanted to hold onto.
I pray daily for Jon Dee, and for others I know who suffer, and also for all those I don’t know, the whole suffering globe. And when I pray, what I pray for them is that they may know that God is still there, and that I am there, and that the Church is there, praying with them, and that even in the midst of their suffering, they are loved, valued, and seen.
I can’t promise them magic tricks, faith healings, a refund of their admission for this abusive theme park we call life.
But I can promise that God (as I understand God) and I will climb in the car and ride with them.
And maybe, somehow, that will be enough.
Commercial announcement: My new book Stories from the Edge: A Theology of Grief comes off the presses this week and into bookstores soon. Thanks. I return you now to your regular programming.
[1] N. T Wright, Evil and the Justice of God (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2006), 21-22.
[2] Walter Brueggemann, The Message of the Psalms (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1984), 52.
So glad I finally tuned into your blog. This is almost as good as a visit with you. GR is only 10 months away! I’m already anxious to read what you will be teaching. Love you. Betty Stevens
betty stevens
August 17th, 2008