It’s hard for me to think of suffering this week. I just returned from a trip to Florida for my brother’s wedding. I’ve experienced almost nothing but joyful occasions for the last week, reunions, marriage, good weather, family, friends, parties.
Today I will wake up and return to work. Some people may say that this should give me a good basis for writing about suffering, sometimes there’s nothing worse than returning to work after a good trip to somewhere like Florida. I enjoy my job and the people that I work with, I support what my employer stands for and the work that comes out of that “Big Box on the Hill”.
The first thing I will see when I get into the office tomorrow, when I look out of my window over the city as I generally do, is a sea of blue tarps covering the roughly 15 tents that have taken residence in our parking lot. As of February 24th and until roughly the end of April, Tent City3 will be there to greet me at work every morning. Tent City is a program that started several years ago in Seattle. It is operated by homeless people, for homeless people. It provides a safe and clean shelter for people who need it.
Often times people automatically associated being homeless with suffering, with a problem. Several weeks ago, in Missio Dei we talked about homelessness and the homeless. Something that really struck me in our conversation has to do with the view of homelessness as a problem to be solved; we’re all seeking an end to homelessness, aren’t we? I mean, no body should have to live without consistent food and shelter, right? While I don’t agree that homelessness should continue, nor do I think the conversations that work to understand how to live with homelessness should stop. One person made the point that some people choose to be homeless, to lead a nomadic lifestyle, free of the normal constraints of society. In many ways homeless people will always be with us.
If we think about it this way, where does the suffering actually lie? In the people who are homeless? Or in someone like me who wants them not to be homeless anymore, to enjoy the same or similar comforts that I enjoy?
I was talking to my mom yesterday morning as I was packing to come back to Seattle. I mentioned to her that I had to write about suffering this week and observing out loud how I was going to have trouble (coming from the experiences I just had) writing.
My mother in all her eminent wisdom affirmed that I was probably right. She added, however, that there is always suffering around me, even in joy. People often assume that things or people will make us happy, that without these things or people we would feel empty and alone. She reminded me that someone can be surrounded by a loving family, live in a beautiful house, drive a nice car and own all the latest fancy equipment and still lead a very unhappy life. Her point was that if someone refuses to see the joy in the surrounding world, he or she will never feel that joy personally. While there are many instances that life can be hard and unhappy and we may have little to no control over what is causing us to suffer, we are ultimately in control of how we deal with that suffering.
Now where does God come into all this? Well to me there’s not a lot of question about what God does to alleviate my suffering, for me God has already done everything. For me God does not bestow suffering upon me, only I can cause myself to suffer. When I begin to see God in everything around me, I cease to feel suffering, I feel joy, I can see the light, I can see the end and I move forward. God sent Jesus to show me (and millions of other people) a way to live without suffering, leading a life that is at the same time both simple and complex. Leading a life that is not about me, but about things that are outside of me: people, communities, my planet.
Going back to the Missio Dei conversation mentioned earlier, someone asked the question, what can we do for the homeless? How can we help them to stop suffering? The response was, “treat them like human beings”, don’t look at them as a problem, look at them as people, with feelings, with a future. If we see them on the street begging for money, whatever money we give them may help them to feed an addiction, it may help them to buy a warm meal. In any case, the loose change we share from our pockets is probably not going to have a significant impact on their lives. What will change their life is if we stop viewing them as “homeless people”.
What would result if we stopped looking at homeless people as “they” and started looking at them as “us”? What if my or his or her suffering ceased to be mine or his or hers and became ours?
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