Day 36. When it Hurts to Remember
Oh yes, the past can hurt. But the way I see it, you can either run from it
or learn from it.
Rafiki, The Lion King
The beautiful canopy of stars that extends far above your tabletop has a name. It is your Level of Memory. Every star represents a memory from your past. The brighter the star, the stronger the particular memory. As you examine each one, a different person, experience, event or impression comes to mind. Some are happy, some sad, and some reawaken feelings like delight, guilt, fear, hope or pain. There are people who spend much time gazing at these stars. There are others who hardly consider them at all.
The darkness of the night sky – the darkness that surrounds and accentuates the brightness of each star – represents your forgotten past. The darkness is everything you’ve experienced that you no longer remember. And once it’s forgotten, it’s not really important, right? If only this were true! I hope you will come to see that this is not the case. In the Level of Memory, the darkness can often be more important than the light.
Those stars, those memories, are seen from where you stand on your Level of Awareness. Remember that anything you see from your Level of Awareness presents itself to you as you prefer to see it – not necessarily as it truly is. So we have to realize that some of these memories have been altered. Things you prefer to recall are given greater prominence. Things you wish to forget fade to black.
That’s why the darkness is so important. In the darkness there may be hidden memories and past events that need to be remembered. “But why?” you may wonder. “Why bring back an unpleasant memory?”
OUCH! Your attention is suddenly and violently wrenched from the night sky. Something very painful has just slammed into your ankle! Your thoughts are confused as you crumple to the ground in pain. What happened? There on the tabletop near where you’ve fallen, you discover a heavy, black, iron ball – it looks something like an old cannon ball! How weird! How...random (bear with me).
What is it?
That iron ball is called a “hurt.” A “hurt” appears on your Level of Awareness every time someone wounds you, every time someone causes you emotional pain. As you struggle to ease the throbbing pain in your ankle, you look out across the surface of your life and are greatly troubled to see many such “hurts” rolling around in a variety of sizes. Some are mere pellets, others as big as bowling balls, and one or two are the size of boulders! The greater the hurt, the bigger the iron ball.
When our lives become unstable, when the foundations under our pillars are shaken by trials and eroded by time, these balls begin to roll. The more our life pitches back and forth, the more violently these balls whip across the tabletop!
In stormy seas, warships of old had more to worry about than the fury of the ocean. If their stores of ammunition broke loose, cannonballs would fly around the deck and wreak havoc. They would do incredible internal damage to the vessel and trip up those trying to man the sails and keep the ship afloat. It was unimaginable chaos!
Have you ever experienced something similar in your own life? A situation as intense as a pitching deck with crashing ammunition? It’s not something I would wish upon anybody. The pain and confusion caused by hurts is multiplied when our foundations are shaken. Those hurts knock us down, get in the way of relationships and push people we care about out of our lives. They destroy things we’ve worked hard to build.
Why, you wonder, don’t they simply roll off the table? Strangely, something holds them up and keeps them from falling off. Many people, it appears, never discover the answer to this question. Many spend their lives dodging these troublesome projectiles – most often by hiding in the crevices of habitual sin. When a big hurt is rolling your way, it’s hard not to dive for cover; to dive into a sin and avoid or ease the pain. Drunkenness, drugs, hook-ups, self-destructive relationships, the list of sins we commit in order to avoid our hurts is legion.
We are not excused from our sins simply because they help us deal with inner pain. God has provided a far better way to handle the painful problem of hurts.
Truly the scene is grim, but it’s not hopeless. Jesus comes to console us in our hurts and to ease the pain and damage they inflict. However, we must confront a disturbing question: why does he remain silent? When we turn to Jesus and beg his help, we find that he seems to be absent. We cry out; we pray, “Lord, please save us, we’re dying.” He doesn’t seem hear or answer. What is happening?
The twelve disciples had a similar experience. In a violent storm, out in a small boat on a great lake, the disciples thought that they would certainly die. Meanwhile, Jesus slept peacefully in the prow of the ship. “And they went and woke him, saying, ‘Master, Master, we are perishing!’ And he awoke and rebuked the wind and the raging waves; and they ceased, and there was a calm. He said to them, ‘Where is your faith?’ And they were afraid, and they marveled, saying to one another, ‘Who then is this, that he commands even wind and water, and they obey him?’” (Lk 8:24, 25).
As we consider how best to deal with these troublesome hurts, let us take to heart these words of Jesus: “Where is your faith?” Even if he seems slow to respond or if he appears to be unaware, don’t give in to despair. You are more precious to God than you can imagine. He will not let you be destroyed if you place your faith in him. Call to him today. Keep calling. Our Lord has a mysterious sense of timing. Trust him. At the right time, he will respond.
Novena Prayer
Jesus says: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”
Pier Giorgio responds: With violence you sow hatred, and you harvest its bad fruits. With charity, you sow peace among men – not the peace that the world gives, but the true peace that only faith in Jesus Christ can give us in common brotherhood.
Let us pray: Blessed Pier Giorgio, guide me in claiming my rightful inheritance as a child of God and heir of His Kingdom. Show me, by your own example, how to be slow to anger, and gentle in my dealings with others. Help me to show forth the peace of Christ by speaking words of peace, and by living a life of peace.
Blessed Pier Giorgio, I ask for your intercession in obtaining from God, Who is meek and humble of heart, all the graces necessary for my spiritual and temporal welfare. I confidently turn to you for help in my present need: (in your own words, ask for the Lord to lead you into greater freedom and self knowledge)
A Book of Prayers in Honor of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, by Rev. Timothy E. Deeter
Make it My Own
Daily Discernment Workbook
QUOTES TO NOTE
1. The Silence of God - Benedict XVI
God is speaking even in silence. In fact, these are some of his most profound communications as Pope Benedict XVI, prior to his pontificate, once wrote:
…Not only God’s speech but also his silence is part of the Christian revelation. God is not only the comprehensible word that comes to us; he is also the silent, inaccessible, uncomprehended and incomprehensible ground that eludes us. To be sure, in Christianity there is a primacy of the logos, of the word, over silence; God has spoken. God is word. But this does not entitle us to forget the truth of God’s abiding concealment. Only when we have experienced him as silence may we hope to hear his speech too, which proceeds in silence. Christology reaches out beyond the cross, the moment when the divine love is tangible, into the death, the silence and the eclipse of God. Can we wonder that the Church and the life of the individual are led again and again into this hour of silence…? [1]
When we’re hurting and we call out to God, he often remains silent. Based on this quote, what might be some reasons for this?
Consider the Lord’s passion, death and resurrection. What does the silence of Holy Saturday, when Jesus was in the tomb, mean for all who cry out to God but hear no response? Is he ignoring us, or is he healing something far deeper than our hurts?
2. Healing is Different for Everybody - John Eldridge
John Eldridge, a popular Christian author, once observed the amazing variety of ways Jesus heals people in the Bible.
If you wanted to learn how to heal the blind and you thought that following Christ around and watching how he did it would make things clear, you’d wind up pretty frustrated. He never does it the same way twice. He spits on one guy; for another, he spits on the ground and makes mud and puts that on his eyes. To a third he simply speaks, a fourth he touches, and a fifth he kicks out a demon. There are no formulas with God. The way in which God heals our wound is a deeply personal process. He is a person and he insists on working personally. For some, it comes in a moment of divine touch. For others, it takes place over time and through the help of another, maybe several others. As Agnes Sanford says, “There are in many of us wounds so deep that only the mediation of someone else to whom we may ‘bare our grief’ can heal us.” …The point is this: Healing never happens outside of intimacy with Christ. The healing of our wound flows out of our union with him [2].
How do I think opening up to others and sharing pains from the past allows God to heal us more deeply?
What is the danger of bottling up our past hurts or saying, “I don’t want to be a burden to others”?
3. “Why me?” In God there is no room for self pity - Takashi Nagai
Takashi Nagai was a Catholic doctor who survived the atomic bomb blast that decimated Nagasaki, Japan in 1945. Having lost his wife and all his worldly possessions, bedridden from radiation sickness, he showed no signs of bitterness. Nagai remained hopeful and confident in God until his death. This excerpt is from a letter he wrote to a community of lepers…
Our lives are of great worth if we accept with good grace the situation Providence places us in and go on living lovingly. A sick person who has grasped this will live so full a life that there will be no room for morbid death wishes.
Some get themselves into a knot over the ‘unfairness’ of God’s Providence. Why are some people afflicted with low IQ’s, handicapped bodies, weak physiques, material poverty? I don’t know, but I can assure you of this: if all of us accepts ourselves as we are, it is absolutely certain that a day will come when we can see how God’s plans have been accomplished, and precisely through our weakness….Our talents and handicaps may differ greatly, but we are all equal in this: each of us is born to manifest God’s glory, to know, love and serve him here below and share in his eternal life after death…. My little children, you are no geniuses, and you have been called to a tough future. True, but if you make the vital decision to live humbly and lovingly, you will live fruitful lives and be happy [3].
Self pity is recognized by the “always/never/nobody/everybody” language we use when we’re under its spell:
“Why do things ALWAYS go so badly for me?”
“Other people NEVER struggle like I do…”
“EVERYBODY gets this so easily, how come I have to work so hard at it?”
“NOBODY could possibly understand what I’m going through.”
Do any of these sound familiar? Which ones? Under what circumstances do I use this language?
How can I resist the language of self-pity and its subtle temptation to become bitter about my pains?
When I feel bitter about my past or become harsh towards others who ‘just don’t get it,’ how can the Sacred Heart teach me patience and peace? Reflect on this quote:
Come to me all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy and my burden light.
Matthew 11:28ff
Conclude with
“Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son,
and to the Holy Spirit.
As it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be.
World without end, Amen.”
[0] lead quote - The Lion King, Disney Animated Motion Picture 1994
[1] Benedict XVI, Introduction to Christianity, tr. by J.R. Foster, New York, Herder & Herder, 1970, pp. 223 - 230
[2] John Eldridge, Wild at Heart, Discovering the Secret of a Man’s Soul, 2001, Nashville, Thomas Nelson, p. 127
[3] Paul Glynn; A Song for Nagasaki, The Story of Takashi Nagai Scientist, Convert and Survivor of the Atomic Bomb, 2009, San Francisco, Ignatius Press, p. 238
All Scripture quotes from the New American Bible, unless otherwise specified