SUFFERING THE INSUFFERABLE

I have been thinking this morning about a brief exchange I had with a friend several years ago.  We had met for lunch, and as we took our seats in the restaurant, I exclaimed, "I'm starving."

She looked at me very seriously and said, “I have never been starving a day in my life." 

I felt suitably chastened for my hyperbole. 

Here are some things I have suffered in the course of my long life:

    Heartbreak

    Insomnia

    Depression

    Illness and physical pain

    The illness and physical pain of loved ones

    The death of loved ones

I mean in no way to downplay these, but today as I take in the horrors experienced by Israelis at the hands of Hamas and the terror being rained upon Palestinians by Israel, I am contemplating the fact that, whatever I may have suffered to date, I have always had a roof over my head, enough to eat, electricity (save for the occasional power outage), hot and cold running water, and the means to control the temperature in my home. 

So, no I have never experienced starvation.  I have also never had to flee my home.  Here are some other things I have never experienced:

     A rocket attack or any other devastation of life in a war zone  

     Forceable separation from loved ones

     Awaiting news of a loved one trapped in a war zone or awaiting news of a kidnapped loved one 

     Learning that a loved one has been killed by terrorists or rocket attacks                                         

In making this list, I am only too well-aware that there, but for fortune, go I. And as I have walked through this day, wrestling with the juxtaposition of my good fortune and the awfulness of this war, these lines from the poet William Stafford have been running through my head: 

    Your life you live by the light you find

    and follow it on as well as you can,

    carrying through darkness wherever you go

    your one little fire that will start again.

In my helplessness before the misery of others, Stafford’s words inspire me to raise this prayer: 

    May those who are suffering the insufferable find light.

    May we, who live in comfort, lift our lights high for those who cannot find their own.  

    And may we humans, at last, learn to live in peace before our folly leaves us all in darkness.

Photo by David Tomaseti on Unsplash