Following our friends
By Chris
People often ask me variations of the same question. It goes something like this: “How can you all continue to see so much suffering and not be overcome by it?”
I usually respond with a few comments about how various temperaments make it easier or harder for some of us. I then tuck in a statement or two about how finding our contemplative basis in service has helped ground us. I comment on the centrality of worship as a sustaining factor, that proclaiming the goodness of God becomes a humble, yet deliberate, act of faith. Finally, I try to wrap all these pieces of the answer around the gift of community.
In community we carry each other, in the good times as well as the difficult ones. In community we find an incubator of hope; in times of doubt, the faith of others reminds us to press on. In community we allow our own struggles to become an entry point for relationships to grow, inviting others into our hearts and minds with the hope of having our struggles validated. We learn from one another and find our way forward, grappling with the same issues toward the same end.
It goes without saying that we couldn’t do this without one another. Journeying together into the places of suffering, hopelessness, abuse and abandonment does take its toll on us, but together we find a way forward, stumbling into the open arms of a loving God.
An even tougher question, but one I don’t hear as often, goes something like this: “How do your friends who suffer do it? How can they still have faith or find a way to laugh?” In its answer is a more complete answer to the first question.
Exploring this question takes humility, courage and faith: humility to admit that those of us who don’t suffer could never really provide an answer for those who do suffer; courage to confess that many of our friends who do suffer have legitimate reasons to question the possibility of a good God; and faith in the resiliency of our friends who are poor.
It does seem surprising that people who have lost everything, children whose childhood has been plundered by poverty, victims of human trafficking and survivors of civil wars can still pray. What must their faith be like? How can they still find the strength to pray prayers that seem to perpetually go unanswered?
It’s also shocking that people living in slums, favelas, sewers or refugee camps have the capacity to celebrate. In fact, some of the best parties I’ve ever been to were thrown by some of the poorest people I know.
How can that be?
Getting back to the first question — the question that’s more common — we’ve come to learn that temperament, prayer practices, worship and even community aren’t enough. It’s likely that many of us will still be overcome by the poverty we witness.
What we’ve learned is that we need our friends who are poor to show us the way to hope. We follow our friends to God’s heart. In simple submission, cultivating friendships with victims of oppression and injustice has been the surprising gift in community.
Chris is a reading junkie. He regularly tracks the year’s books and number of pages. He is currently participating in “Dusting off the shelves,” a competitive reading group with friends. Last year, he read 56 books, totaling 12,522 pages.