Changing Conditions

If we did not feel there was something wrong, we would do nothing to change our condition.

Suffering, writes Thomas Merton in Opening The Bible, is an incentive to change. The change needed, he asserts, is to unify with God. Get our affairs in order. Become centered. Get out of selfishness, and be be our true self. The problem we have as humans is that we try to avoid suffering, or we try to get rid of suffering. We maintain our ego, and division from God and our true self.

At the time of my greatest suffering, I felt closest to God and furthest from the entrapments of life. I rejected the false life and felt true suffering. In suffering I struggled and clung to some spiritual understandings and searched for more. What mattered most had nothing to do with life of labor and mindless entertainment. I wanted only to rest in the sunlight, feel the breeze, dig in the dirt, be with nature, and cry.

What if I had just kept busy? What if I had distracted my mind, avoided suffering or "got rid of suffering" with medication, self prescribed or professionally? Where would I be today? What if I knew the answers to those questions? I faced the fire and walked in. I know where I stand today and it is preferred to where I might have ended had I run.

Last night in a dream a yellow taxi cab pulled into our driveway. The garage door opened. We all shouted, "It's Aaron! He's home!" We ran to the door, the garage door continued to open. The taxi pulled in. All we could see of Aaron in the back seat were his legs dressed in brown courdoroy pants. I woke up with tears in my eyes.

As I slip back into the world of living I may be losing some of my suffering. At the same time I am noticing the balancing between disbelief that Aaron could be gone and astonishment that I once had another living son. His photographs are appearing slightly foreign to me. I'm beginning to see an image out of place. I'm becoming used to seeing Cathy, Patrick, and Tom. The fourth person in the old pictures takes up a lot of space. He's out of place. I can't hear his voice.

The conditions are changing. I've been avoiding suffering. Keeping busy is to stack up unattended sorrows.