"The Chronic Ache"--August 28, 2019

"The Chronic Ache"--August 28, 2019

"For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies." [Romans 8:19-23]

Here is a lesson I have to keep re-learning: don't run from the wounds, don't avoid the pain, and don't try to fill the empty place with things that can't make you whole, even if it is hard to bear their persistence.  The ache of the present is both a promise of future wholeness and a gift for meeting other people in their own aching right now--both for you, and for all of creation itself.

Now, before I dare to unpack that, I am a little embarrassed to admit that the voice that I first consciously learned it from wasn't a wise and profound theologian or spiritual advisor (Henri Nouwen or Saint John of the Cross would have been good candidates).  It was Larry the Cable Guy--yeah, the character-comedian of the "Blue Collar Comedy Tour" fame, who also voices the tow truck character "Tow Mater" in the Disney-Pixar Cars movie franchise.  And yeah, it was from his voice work as a talking cartoon tow-truck in the movie sequel Cars 2 where I first learned it--before I was aware that the great spiritual teachers had been saying the same thing for a long time, too.

So... there's a scene in this particular children's cartoon movie, where the rusty old truck Tow Mater is getting a high-tech overhaul, with new gadgets, a new look, and a fresh set of tires, I imagine.  And when they want to hammer out his dings and dents to make him look shiny and new along with all the other improvements they are making to him, but Mater refuses.  He insists on keeping his dents, keeping his scratches, and keeping his scuffs, rather than losing them, because they remind him of all the misadventures he has been through to get those scrapes, and they remind him of his friend (the talking cartoon race car Lightning McQueen, because, of course...) who had been with him for all those times.  Mater doesn't just hold onto the dings and dents because of the past, though--in a sense, they are also a reminder that points him forward to a time when he and his friend will be together again, getting into new trouble and earning more marks in their chrome.  The ache of having a scar, a wound, a dent, or an empty place (like where a broken taillight is supposed to be, or a missing side mirror) has become something to treasure, rather than something to be ashamed of.  And in a way, for this cartoon talking tow-truck, the empty place where the hubcap is missing is a reminder of the friend he is looking forward to having adventures with all over again.  So in the mean time, he leaves the dents, the crumples in the fender, and the other broken places.  They have become gifts, as odd as it is to suggest.

Now, it took me more than a few times listening to that movie playing from the back seat of the car on long family car rides with my kids for that message to sink in. And, again, I readily admit that wise spiritual voices like Nouwen (who famously wrote about being "wounded healers") would have told me the same without all the CGI talking cars.  But as Paul the apostle would note, I didn't even need to get this from a book, either, because creation itself bears an ache and a longing for wholeness... and yet, Paul sees that longing as a point of hope, because it points forward to a time when all creation is made new in God's great cosmic renewal project.  And if I would pay attention to the way creation itself aches, I would see not only a token to give me hope of my own, but I might also see that our shared ache connects us--me, and all of creation, and all of us who bear pains from this life.

Paul says that all of creation itself is groaning and waiting to be freed "from its bondage to decay."  Our sense of grief at death, our pain in the face of loss, and our compassion for those who suffer--these are not things to be swept away or numbed. They are ways in which we are connected to every other corner of creation, every other creature that lives and breathes and dies, every other life that sees the beauty of the world and also fears for its fragility.  

Our impulse, when we feel this ache so inextricably tied to life in the world, is to find ways to make it go away.  We numb ourselves with distractions (I'm really good at that).  We ignore the problems or the pains hoping they go away or aren't really there (this doesn't work).  We try to fill the empty place inside us with things or experiences that will trigger endorphins in our brains and mask the ache (like using a vacation to "get away from all my problems" or "retail therapy"). And really all of those are simply ways of trying to avoid coming face to face with the inescapable ache of life in a world where suffering is an ever-present reality.   

I learned years ago to recognize (even though I still have to breathe deeply before I say this sentence out loud) that "There are no pain-free options in life."  My choices will always be between options that have some kind of pain or another--present or deferred, sometimes; or shifted from me onto someone else, perhaps; but the ache is always present somewhere, like the cosmic background radiation leftover from the Big Bang that scientists detect from outer space.  The ache is unavoidable, because this is a world in which there are limits, in which there is only so much time, only so many resources, and in which painful things happen. The question that I think Saint Paul is on the verge of asking is whether we can use that pain--to hold tenderly but tightly to the ache--so that it becomes a point of connection by which we can understand the way others suffer, too.  

It is notable, I think, that Saint Paul doesn't say, "Creation is groaning right now, but you and I can have our troubles wished away with a prayer and a snap of a finger if we will only pray harder."  He doesn't say, "Creation aches, but boy, is it a good thing we don't have to suffer." I think Paul opens up the conversation to include all of creation to remind us that there is no way of avoiding the ache that come with life, despite all our attempts to numb it, ignore it, or fill it in and paint over it, but rather than the chronic ache of life can become a sign of hope for us of a promised future.

Like Barbara Brown Taylor once put it, you can't miss what you never had.  And like C. S. Lewis observed in Mere Christianity, our sense that something is wrong with the world is evidence that we are wired with a hope for it to be put right--a hope that comes from God.  If we just yawned indifferently at the suffering of children, at the plight of people displaced by hurricanes, at the hunger of those fleeing starvation, or at the abuse of animals, we might just conclude that all of those terrible things are just "the way it is" in a dog-eat-dog world. We might just conclude that there is no good, no evil, no use for compassion, no meaning to mercy, and we could just decide that there is no point to the universe but power, and that Might Makes Right.  But the universal sense we have that pulls us to care for those who suffer--which comes from our own experience of suffering--is a sign to us that this isn't how things will be forever.  The chronic ache becomes a sign of promise for the future when all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be made well... and it is the key to connecting us with one another when you are the one who suffers, or when I am the one acutely feeling the ache today.

Our aching becomes a gift, then--not that it doesn't stop hurting, but that it becomes possible through the pain to see our connection to all of creation, and to meet others in their own pain while we look forward to the restoration of all things.  But until all of creation is put right, it makes no sense for me to just numb the ache away now--that just allows me to pretend the pain of the rest of the world is unimportant.  Feeling it now reminds me that none of us are fully free until we are all free, and none of us are truly healed until all of us are.

So it took a cartoon truck for me to get that... but now that I can see it, I will treasure that empty place differently that I have been.  And I will see the ways I am wounded as gifts through which I may be in communion with others sent to me by God.

Lord Jesus, give us the courage to love the wounds and hold onto the tender places in our hearts and the meeting places where you will show up.