{"id":6339,"date":"2019-09-22T18:25:28","date_gmt":"2019-09-22T22:25:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=6339"},"modified":"2019-09-23T16:03:27","modified_gmt":"2019-09-23T20:03:27","slug":"the-suffering-of-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=6339","title":{"rendered":"The Suffering of God"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation from the Center for Action and Contemplation<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Sunday, September 22, 2019<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

I am not alone in my tiredness or sickness or fears, but at one with millions of others from many centuries, and it is all part of life.<\/i> \u2014Etty Hillesum [1]<\/p>\n

Just days before I began writing <\/i>my book about the Universal Christ, I learned that I would have to put down my fifteen-year-old black Lab because she was suffering from inoperable cancer. Venus had been giving me a knowing and profoundly accepting look for weeks, but I did not know how to read it. Deep down, I did not want to know. After her diagnosis, every time I looked at her, she gazed up at me with those same soft and fully permissive eyes, as if to say, \u201cIt is okay. You can let me go. I know it is my time.\u201d But she patiently waited until I, too, was ready.<\/p>\n

In the weeks before she died, Venus somehow <\/i>communicated to me that all sadness, whether cosmic, human, or canine, is one and the same. Somehow, her eyes were all eyes, even God\u2019s eyes, and the sadness she expressed was a divine and universal sadness.<\/p>\n

When we carry our small suffering in solidarity with humanity\u2019s one universal longing for deep union, it helps keep us from self-pity or self-preoccupation. We know that we are all in this together. It is just as hard for everybody else, and our healing is bound up in each other\u2019s. Almost all people are carrying a great and secret hurt, even when they don\u2019t know it. <\/i>This realization softens the space around our overly defended hearts. It makes it hard to be cruel to anyone. It somehow makes us one\u2014in a way that easy comfort and entertainment never can.<\/p>\n

Some mystics go so far as to say that individual suffering doesn\u2019t exist at all and that there is only one suffering. It is all the same, and it is all the suffering of God. The image of Jesus on the cross somehow communicates that to the willing soul. A Crucified God is the dramatic symbol of the one suffering <\/i>that God fully enters into with us<\/i>\u2014much more than just for us, <\/i>as many Christians were trained to think.<\/p>\n

If suffering, even unjust suffering (and all suffering is unjust), is part of one Great Mystery, then I am willing to carry my little portion. Etty Hillesum<\/a> (1914\u20131943), a young, Dutch, Jewish woman who died in Auschwitz, truly believed her suffering was also the suffering of God. She even expressed a deep desire to help God carry some of it:<\/p>\n

And that is all we can manage these days and also all that really matters: that we safeguard that little piece of You, God, in ourselves. And perhaps in others as well. Alas, there doesn\u2019t seem to be much You Yourself can do about our circumstances, about our lives. Neither do I hold You responsible. You cannot help us, but we must help You and defend Your dwelling place inside us to the last. [2]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Such freedom and generosity of spirit are almost unimaginable to me. What creates such altruistic and loving people?<\/p>\n

from my 3rd cup of tea writing for September 22:<\/p>\n

3rd cup.\u00a0 <\/span>Richard Rohr\u2019s meditation for today was on the suffering of god.\u00a0 <\/span>He quotes Etty Hillesum.\u00a0 <\/span>What I read reminded me of that time when I was severely depressed and I went to Jan & Rick\u2019s house in Warren.\u00a0 <\/span>I was sitting in the living room and there was a picture on the wall of the head of Jesus on the cross.\u00a0 <\/span>He\u2019s wearing the crown of thorns and his head is bowed.\u00a0 <\/span>I looked at him and I thought \u201cHe knows just how I feel.\u00a0 <\/span>None of the other gods in the whole pantheon even cares how I feel.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>That completely changed my relationship with Jesus.\u00a0 <\/span>Slowly I came to the understanding that God suffers with every being that suffers unjustly: Christian, Muslim, Black, cow, honey bee…\u00a0 <\/span>Reconnecting with this truth, my whole body softened.\u00a0 <\/span>I feel sad, but I don\u2019t feel armored and defensive as I have for a while.\u00a0 <\/span>Global warming \u2014 climate disruption \u2014 I\u2019ve been feeling angry on behalf of the children and grandchildren, who will have to live with the consequences of the greed and deliberate ignorance fueling the acts of their elders, parents and grandparents. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve also been feeling angry and defensive because a friend sent me another long harangue on facebook about being vegan.\u00a0 <\/span>I keep getting caught in trying to explain to her.\u00a0 <\/span>I don’t think she will try to understand\u00a0what my difficulties are.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation from the Center for Action and Contemplation Sunday, September 22, 2019 I am not alone in my tiredness or sickness or fears, but at one with millions of others from many centuries, and it is all … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,11,14,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-healing","category-present-day","category-spirit","category-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6339\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}