Everything There Is to Say on Suffering

BROODING DANE is a sister site. I plug some pretty dark poems into that hole. Not too many bright spots, there. Why so dark, you ask? Light does cast shadow, ya know. But yes, I do tend to the minor keys. Sometimes I feel like a motherless child... I'm just a poor, wayfaring stranger... Then again, BLOATED MONSTER takes a brighter tone.

What's that you say? I'm copping out? I haven't answered the question? Well, true. What's past is prologue. Why so dark. Ah. This is how I deal with it. This is my therapy. It's not the dragon slaying, but it's the minstrel's song about the beast. Once, full of myself and my wisdom, I said there were only three kinds of song: love songs, story songs, and god songs. But what are god songs, but love songs? And what are love songs, but story songs. I love you I love you I love you. That's a story that says I love you.

We are endlessly seeking to be understood. It is the nature of a personality to reveal itself. Hence, the Bible. God created the world, so that he could be known. When we put this together with the fact that it really does help, to talk about our problems, we may conclude that God wanted to talk about his pain. What pain? Jesus was slain from before the foundation of the world (1Peter 1:20). Before there was such a thing as time, God in eternity -- perfect in his nature, and therefore complete already -- must have suffered, in eternity, as Jesus suffered on the cross. Jesus is still on the cross, and always was, and always will be.

We move though time the way a tune slides through our ears. God hears a whole song in one note. And it's not that everything is just a vast oneness, to him. He deals with it all, with integrity. But he deals with himself, too. And he deals with his suffering, by letting us know something of it.

A musician plays the notes -- a virtuoso plays the silences. An artist paints the image -- a master paints the essence. And a poet, a poet must speak truth. Hubris? Whatever. I have other poems, that are not so dark. Maybe they're as true as the ones I post. I think they are. But they're not as ... dare I say, deep? Is it only darkness that's deep? Is only suffering true? Does joy have no voice? Hmm. Oh oh. Could it be I have no joy?

Maybe it's a phase, a second adolescence. My defense is that, joy or no, there are things I love. And I take pleasure in the pleasure of others. And what is certainly true is that it helps to talk. And it helps to sleep. In this, we may pity God -- not in his eternal suffering, for that's part of his nature, and I will not pity God for his nature. God gave us a day of rest -- God gave us sleep -- because he knew the need for it. We may pity God, because he cannot sleep. Now that's misery.


J