Searching for Meaning
Monday, 10/15
Richard Rohr edit
Some of the
greatest wisdom
has come from those
those who experienced unspeakable
trauma and harm
MEANING
work (doing something significant),
in love (caring for another person),
and in courage during difficult times
we give our suffering
meaning by the way
in which we respond to it. . . .
freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.
You cannot control what happens to you in life... you can control what you will feel & do
about what happens to you.
"More arrests, more terror,
concentration camps, the
arbitrary dragging off of
fathers, sisters, brothers...
... we seek the meaning of life, wondering whether any meaning can be left. But that is something each one of us must settle with
himself and with God.
& perhaps life has its own meaning even if it takes a lifetime to find it...
I felt I was about to collapse under a tremendous weight. . . . I said that I confronted the “suffering of mankind” . . . but
that was not really what it was. Rather I feel like a small battlefield, in which the
problems, or some of the
problems, of our time are
being fought out.
All one can hope to do is to keep oneself humbly available, to allow oneself to be a battlefield.
~Etty Hillesum (1914–1943), a young Jewish woman.
died at Auschwitz, 
we are called to be both the agony and the ecstasy of God—for the life of the world.
to accept that battlefield
 |
| accept & somehow participate in the mystery of death & resurrection in oneself & in the universe. |
process of “oneing” with Foundational Reality
destructive dimension
evil, pain, & suffering.
the great paradox. It is . . . the unfolding cycle of birth-death-rebirth... It transpires all over creation, on the macro and micro scales alike
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