Finding God in Resilience

In my life, I have lost my way more times than I can count. I have set out to be married and ended up divorced. I have set out to be healthy and ended up sick. I have set out to live in New England and ended up in Georgia. When I was thirty, I set out to be a parish priest, planning to spend the rest of my life caring for souls in any congregation that would have me. Almost thirty years later, I teach school… While none of these displacements was pleasant at first, I would not give a single one of them back. I have found things while I was lost that I might never have discovered if I had stayed on the path. I have lived through parts of life that no one in her right mind would ever willingly have chosen, finding enough overlooked treasure in them to outweigh my projected wages in the life I had planned. ~ Barbara Brown Taylor, "An Altar in the World"

Barbara Brown Taylor’s quote made me think a bit about my life, the difficult times, the times the path I thought I was on seemed to disappear. I, too, have lost my way probably more times than I can care to count. Once you’ve lived long enough, I’d venture we can all say that. I’s also be willing to bet there are many things we’ve experienced that no one in their right mind would choose to go through. While I don’t agree that I’d not give a single one of those things back (if only), as she pointed out, there are treasures we have found on those new (often painful and difficult) paths that we never would have found otherwise.

Consider some of the things life throws at us that we’d rather not go through: the death of a child, spouse or other close loved one, cancer or other debilitating or chronic illness, job loss, addiction (yours or a loved one’s), losing your house, accident, abuse, and more.

The “treasures” are sometimes a long time in coming, but they look like wisdom, understanding, insight, compassion, empathy, forgiveness, a deeper appreciation for life, perspective, depth.

This is where we find God… in the resiliency to get through and in the treasures found along the way.

The apostle Paul knew this too. In Romans 5:1-5 he says:

… we even rejoice in our afflictions! We know that affliction produces perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and character, hope. And such hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

I’ll grant you that in this passage he sounds a bit like a religious fanatic. I can’t quite go along with rejoicing in our afflictions. And let’s be perfectly clear here, while Paul may have believed that his afflictions were from God, I would never suggest that God causes our suffering just so we’ll learn and grow. I believe that God is found in the strength we find to get through, and in the personal and spiritual learning and growing we experience in the process.

However, I think Paul and Barbara Brown Taylor are essentially saying the same thing. While she eventually found “treasures” in what took her off her desired path and often caused suffering, Paul says that his suffering produced resilience, made him a deeper, wiser person, which in turn deepened his hope, a hope in the divine which does not disappoint.

Too often we believe that God has deserted us at the most difficult times in our lives. Why? First, because life is so hard and we feel so broken that we sometimes feel alone. And, second, because God hasn’t fixed “it,” hasn’t made the way easy, hasn’t cleared the path of roadblocks. I don’t know why we think that belief in God will mean life will have no suffering, disappointments, betrayals, loss, illness or death. There is no one ever who made it through life without those things.

That doesn’t mean we don’t pray for help, healing and strength in difficult times, but we need to understand that God’s part in all of this is not as a magic genie to give us whatever we want. God’s part in our lives is to help us get through. Sometimes it’s an inner strength, sometimes it is good friends or family, sometimes it’s a good therapist. Sacred Presence is found in the resilience to take even one step forward, in the perseverance to not give up.

Interestingly enough, it has been the difficult times, more than the easier times, that have caused me to value life more. We take too much for granted when life is easy.

Robert Wicks, in his book Spiritual Resilience, tells this story:

In 1972, a little over a week before the great Rabbi Abraham Heschel died, he was asked by an interviewer for NBC-TV if he had a message for today’s youth. Rather than being put off by such a broad and challenging question, he nodded affirmatively and said: “Remember, that there is meaning beyond absurdity. Know that every deed counts, that every word is power… above all, remember that you must build your life as if it were a work of art.”

His advice is to be resilient, to hang in there, to remember that every small act of kindness counts, that every word we utter has power, so don’t give up. And I find the concept of making your life a work of art to be very powerful. A work of art doesn’t just have light colors, in order to have depth and substance, it must also have shadow and areas of darkness.

In The Practice of Finding, Holly Whitcomb shares a story about Ben Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, who once said:

[I] once had a distraught young tenor ask to speak to me after class. He told me he’d lost his girlfriend and was in such despair that he was almost unable to function. I consoled him, but the teacher in me was secretly delighted. Now he would be able to fully express the heartrending passion of the song in Schubert’s Die Winterreise about the loss of the beloved. That song had completely eluded him the previous week because up to then, the only object of affection he had ever lost was a pet goldfish.

My teacher, the great cellist Gaspar Cassado, used to say to us as students, “I’m so sorry for you; your lives have been so easy. You can’t play great music unless your heart’s been broken.

Our lives become a work of art when we find the treasures buried in the suffering, when light and shadow bring depth and perspective. This is God embedded in the resilience, and the transformation that happens through pushing our way through the challenges of life.

Love & Light!

Kaye