4th - 11th Nov 2007

How do we cope with grief and suffering? Usually very badly as it affects our very being. Jim Cotter, like many people, has experienced much pain in his life and expresses our reactions to it in this paraphrase of one of the 'Beatitudes':

"Miserable are those who wallow in self-pity:
they will sink into bitterness and despair.
Blessed are those who accept their experience of sorrow:
they will grow in courage and compassion."

Jim Cotter (from "Prayer at Night: A Book for the Darkness". Sheffield: Cairns Publications, 1983).

Additional Thought
I think it is worth quoting extensively from Harold Kushner's book 'Why Bad Things Happen to Good People':

"In the final analysis, the question of why bad things happen to good people translates itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now it has happened.

"Are you capable of forgiving and accepting in love a world which has disappointed you by not being perfect, a world in which there is so much unfairness and cruelty, disease and crime, earthquake and accident? Can you forgive its imperfections and love it because it is capable of containing great beauty and goodness, and because it is the only world we have?

"Are you capable of forgiving and loving the people around you, even if they have hurt you and let you down by not being perfect? Can you forgive them and love them, because there aren't any perfect people around, and because the penalty for not being able to love imperfect people is condemning oneself to loneliness?

"Are you capable of forgiving and loving God even when you have found out that He is not perfect, even when He has let you down and disappointed you by permitting bad luck and sickness and cruelty in His world, and permitting some of those things to happen to you? Can you learn to love and forgive Him despite His limitations, as Job does, and as you once learned to forgive and love your parents even though they were not as wise, as strong, or as perfect as you needed them to be?

"And if you can do these things, will you be able to recognize that the ability to forgive and the ability to love are the weapons God has given us to enable us to live fully, bravely, and meaningfully in this less-than-perfect world?"

Harold S Kushner (from 'Why Bad Things Happen to Good People', Pan Books, 1982, p152).