Dusting off our exquisitely tender hearts
Lenten reflections on stumbling toward solidarity in suffering
In the Western Christian tradition, today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. Along with millions of people throughout the world, I’ll be smearing palm-frond dust on foreheads in the shape of the cross, while telling recipients:
Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
This is a season of penitence — that is, a posture of sorrow for the depths of human suffering, and remorse for the ways we add to it. In the highly individualistic, ultra-competitive culture of the United States, this penitence is often isolated to introspection, oriented toward making an inventory of one’s personal sins. Rendered simplistically, this approach can overlook:
the way in which evil/sin/suffering is spread by systems that act oppressively on our behalf, often when we do nothing at all, and
what we can do to actively respond to and resist these systems of evil.
Mindful of this tendency in our culture and in myself, this Lent, I am asking a question inspired by a spirituality of nonviolence:
How is Love calling me to see the reality of suffering more clearly and to respond with compassion and courage?
A few days ago I was listening to the latest episode of Across the Divide, a great podcast co-hosted by a new friend of mine, Palestinian theologian Daniel Bannoura. This episode features Black-Mexican theologian Matthew Vega, who puts the Black theological tradition in conversation with the struggle for Palestinian liberation. If you only have a little time, I would commend to you the last seven minutes of the episode, in which Vega engages with the question of evil and suffering. I was especially struck by these musings:
“The reality of suffering doesn’t summon Christians to write treatises on it… but summons Christians to act with urgency to resist it. When you structure the problem of evil as a rational one to be figured out, you’re already creating a scenario in which your conclusions will be rational and not practical.”
Where white (European, Western, colonial) theologies tend to engage with evil as an abstraction and the problem of suffering as something that can be intellectually apprehended, Vega explains that the focus of Black Theology (and the embodied legacy of the Black Radicals) is to do something about suffering.
Responding to suffering with compassion and courage
I recognize in myself the tendency to live in my head where suffering is concerned. It requires less discomfort to reflect on the nature of suffering than it does to actively engage with suffering. When I was a teenager, this looked like pondering suffering in the abstract. I read books like C.S. Lewis’s The Problem of Pain, struggling to square my theology of a loving God with all the suffering in the world. These days, I can spend hours ruminating on the suffering I’ve seen on my cell phone screen, without moving into action.
I don’t think either of these approaches — the rationalizing of suffering, or its mindless consumption — do much to help alleviate real human suffering. Both keep suffering tucked away in cerebral file cabinets. Meanwhile, responding with courage and compassion to suffering — my own and that of others — involves exposure.
Seeing reality rightly is painful. When we begin to unpack oppressive systems — like white supremacy, zionism, classism, ableism, sexism, transphobia, to name just a few — we start to see how we have been harmed by them, as well as how our benefitting from some of them has harmed other people. This can feel like a shock to the system, and it’s a natural response to retreat back into our well-sorted filing system. But we have to see reality as it actually is in order to heal.
It is fitting on this Valentine’s Day to note that it is Love that gives us the courage to see, and in seeing, to respond with fierce compassion to the suffering of the world. No one speaks of love’s power quite like bell hooks, the Black feminist writer who wrote in Salvation: Black People and Love:
“Love is profoundly political. Our deepest revolution will come when we understand this truth. Only love can give us the strength to go forward in the midst of heartbreak and misery. Only love can give us the power to reconcile, to redeem, the power to renew weary spirits and save lost souls. The transformative power of love is the foundation of all meaningful social change. Without love our lives are without meaning. Love is the heart of the matter. When all else has fallen away, love sustains.”
When suffering is kept at arm’s length — whether rationalized away or consumed mindlessly — the possibility of healing relationship is also kept at bay. Yet vulnerability is always available to us, inviting us to clear room in our hearts for solidarity with others.
When we recognize how our lives are linked by suffering, we can begin to respond: We bear witness. We speak truth to the lies we have been told about the suffering of others being necessary for our own comfort. We offer compassionate companionship. We alleviate suffering by courageously, collectively addressing systemic forms of violence.
We love.
We love.
We love.