"Voiced suffering creates new possibilities."
Walter Brueggemann
Oscar Wilde on Suffering
❝ BUT WHILE THERE WERE TIMES WHEN I REJOICED IN THE IDEA THAT MY SUFFERINGS WERE TO BE ENDLESS, I COULD NOT BEAR THEM TO BE WITHOUT MEANING. NOW I FIND HIDDEN SOMEWHERE AWAY IN MY NATURE SOMETHING THAT TELLS ME THAT NOTHING IN THE WHOLE WORLD IS MEANINGLESS, AND SUFFERING LEAST OF ALL. THAT SOMETHING HIDDEN AWAY IN MY NATURE, LIKE A TREASURE IN A FIELD, IS HUMILITY. ❞
OSCAR WILDE, DE PROFUNDIS
Lamentations is not grief management
Suffering is an event in which we're particularly vulnerable to grace, able to recognize dimensions in God and depths in the self. To treat it as a problem is to demean the person. The fact that in Lamentations there's no recourse to incantation or magical formulas to secure protection against the effects of divine anger - a common practice in neighboring civilizations - serves as a warning against the acquisition of "techniques” to alleviate suffering.
Lamentations is not grief management.
Nothing, in the long run, does more to demean the person who suffers than to busy oneself in fixing him or her up. And nothing can provide more meaning to suffering than taking the suffering seriously, offering our companionship, and waiting in the dark with that person for the coming of dawn.
Eugene Peterson, Conversations, (p.1259)