Protected from nothing, sustained in all things
Cultivating the mystic's courage in the face of suffering
[S]tabilized in love, we are grounded in the courage that empowers us to touch the hurting places. Prior to being grounded in love, we think we are nothing but the self that things happen to. We are afraid to go near the hurting place because we absolutize the relative. But if we are absolutely grounded in the absolute love of God that protects us from nothing, even as it sustains us in all things, it grounds us to face all things with courage and tenderness.
Yesterday, I sat and talked with a lifelong friend who is wading through the deep waters of personal suffering. I, too, have also been grieving a profound loss. He, I, and the ones we love have not been protected from these sufferings.
Suffering is experienced both near to us and far away, disrupting our present and seeding anxiety about the future. In our social and political life, suffering has disrupted the presumed comfort that many Americans feel entitled to. Close to us, in my community, fellow-church-members and neighbors have been stolen and detained by ICE agents. Across an ocean, families starve and death tolls continue to rise in Gaza, while my US tax dollars send bombs instead of bread. We grapple with reasonable fear around the coming reality that millions of Americans will be stripped of health insurance when the “Big Ugly Bill” impacts Medicaid after the midterm elections. Our neighbors up the street and around the world will not be protected from these sufferings.
I find myself in times such as these meditating with the words of Christian mystic James Finley, a faculty member of the Center for Action and Contemplation. My insightful spouse, whose spirituality has been deeply shaped by beautiful Catholic practices of mysticism, recommended me to Finley. I’ve encountered his wisdom in many books and his great podcast “Turning to the Mystics”. Among other things, he has offered a slow, close reading of Christian mystics like Thomas Merton, Teresa of Ávila, St. John of the Cross, Julian of Norwich, and others.
One thing I’ve heard Finley say in many different ways is that God and/or God’s love “protects us from nothing.” That rings true.
“[T]he love of God protects us from nothing, even as it sustains us in all things…” That, to me, is a theological statement produced by mature spirituality, a prolonged exposure to suffering, and a testament to the presence of God amidst pain.
Christian mysticism does not entail indifference to suffering. It is also not suggesting a masochistic welcome of pain—although some traditions’ extreme ascetic practices seem to veer in that direction.
Many of us are familiar with theodicy or the “problem of evil.” How can we believe in a good and loving Divine Being, in full control of the universe, when we experience such deep and widespread suffering? I’ve been unconvinced by the egos and arguments of those apologists who feel it their duty to argue theism on God’s behalf.
The mystics don’t intellectualize the reality that terrible things happen. They also don’t oversimplify that “bad things happen to good people.” They recognize that suffering is more complex than a simple binary of good and bad. Christian mystics in particular affirm in the words of Jesus from Matthew 5, that “the rain falls on the just and the unjust alike.”
Christian mysticism recognizes suffering and yet proclaims the sufficiency of the Divine. Practices of prayer, song, community, work, and meditation give space to both adequately recognize the depth of suffering and the presence of the Divine.
Finley encourages those of us on the journey to be “grounded in love.” The promise in that is the hope that even amidst suffering, we are found in perfect love, and that the Divine love is present to us. With this foundation, Finley suggests love “grounds us to face all things with courage and tenderness.”
That is beautiful. But, I ain’t got it.
And, I don’t know if these are enough. At this moment, courage and tenderness seem insufficient to the task.
My courage doesn’t heal someone else’s terminal illnesses. My friend’s daughter’s courage as she faced brain cancer was not enough to preserve her life, and her parents’ courage to endure with her through such unthinkable suffering doesn’t fill the gaping wound of her absence over the past year. Tenderness from my young student and her children was not enough to stave off her US-raised husband and their father’s deportation nor has it gotten him any closer to reuniting with his family in the United States. Tenderness doesn’t melt through hearts of plutocrats, fascists, or dictators, and doesn’t even seem up to the task of convincing a partisan student or neighbor.
But, I’m willing, desperate, to give it a try.
I’ll strive to be found in love. I profess “God is love” as a core tenet of my sacred texts and a foundational theological witness of my tradition. I’ll confess with my Reformed tradition’s Heidelberg Catechism’s opening reminder that “my only comfort in life and in death” is that “I am not my own, but belong,” materially and immaterially, to a loving God who created, redeems, and sustains me and all of creation. I hope to be grounded in love, because even if courage and tenderness seem insufficient for the task, that’s my greatest and only hope.
I hope others will engage in such practices of contemplation, finding a grounding in love divine. We have many great teachers in this, such as bell hooks, who in All About Love reminds us love is a verb practiced through dismantling oppressive systems, and Søren Kirkegaard, who writes on love’s works and self-giving love as distinct from emotion and mutual egotism.
Unless we enter the hurting place, we will remain disconnected from the presence of the Divine and the remarkable capacities of love. We must take our seat at what philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff calls “the morning bench,” in order to realize the courage and tenderness that activate love in us and in the world.
I still have trepidation “to go near the hurting place,” recalling Finley’s quote. That means I have work yet to do in practicing love and being grounded in it. Yet, I’ll go whether I like it or not, because here I am. And, I hope enough of us will seek and find love enough to stand there, amidst the suffering, with and for one another. I have no choice but to hope that love will sustain us.
Let us meet this day grounded in love, walking in courage and tenderness.