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Showing posts with label Suffering. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Suffering. Show all posts

Thursday, August 06, 2015

Insight ? ~


"For me pain has no meaning."

Statement by Peter Hintze 

Vice President of the German Bundestag.

Protestant theologian,

while debating assisted suicide.

Monday, January 12, 2015

Mothers of the Fallen ~




Take your hands from your eyes wet with tears, dear Mother, to show us the beauty there that your suffering has caused.

Friday, April 01, 2011

Wise Old Monk ~

During a conversation I asked him where he found all the wisdom he imparts to others. He was embarrassed but said: maybe one has to suffer.

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Suffering ~

Those on crutches would look me in the face and greet; the healthy ones would pass me by.

Thursday, April 09, 2009

Good Friday ~ 2009

They were talking about what it meant to suffer — and our inability to. How we immediately grasp for the pills . . .

Sunday, February 08, 2009

A Mother's Pain ~

Does the suffering of the mothers who have lost a son in war ever cease, or does the pain only end as she breathes her final breath?

Thursday, August 07, 2008

Easing Pain ~

He was old and bent over so badly that all he could see on his walks were the flowers along the path.

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Inside St. Peter's Basilica ~ Pietà





Her head bent, looking at her misery she holds on her lap. She is composed. She accepts, she consents. It seems as if she has breathed out, her heartbeat diastolic. She is all inward, she is weightless. Michaelangelo has focused all her sorrow in her face. In capturing her suffering he has made a universal image of the noble beauty that only suffering can bring about.

Monday, January 14, 2008

Inside St. Peter's Basilica ~

. . . and the three old nuns wearing wimples, bent over with age, tilting their heads to the side, painfully, trying to look up.

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Beauty ~

I look into faces and find that the most beautiful are those that have suffered most.

Saturday, July 07, 2007

Consolation? ~

There is more to be learned in bearing loss, the old monk said, than in the rapture of bliss.

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

All Saints Day ~ 2006

All Saints Day. I know a lot of them right around me. Like the mother who took her 40 year old son to the grave last week. The same mother who years ago lost one of her children when a bookshelf fell on top of him. That saddened woman who can never stop mourning. Quiet saints like she show us how to go on trusting in God. . . And maybe these too.

Saturday, July 29, 2006

Friendship ~

Today I get news that an old friend of mine, and choir director and organist at our church back home has been arrested and put it jail for having touched a sixteen year old music student of his in an inappropriate manner on two occasions following the lessons. He also is said to have furnished alcohol to the teenager.

Monday, July 17, 2006

In this Valley of Tears ~

The insight of the old monks stands: It is the suffering, that we are bound to bear, that keeps us turning to God.

Saturday, May 27, 2006

Treasure Piece ~

Today I disposed of an old black briefcase Aunt Martha had given me as a graduation gift back in the 1950's. I had used it through my college years and as a young teacher. When it was too worn to use I just couldn't bring myself to throw it away.

From my window, with heavy heart, I watched as the disposal truck came and drove off with it.

Valley of Tears ~

Spent the hour at the piano this morning. How consoling and quieting were the Bach hymns I played after attending the crushing funeral services for Dr. C. yesterday. I played with his wife and two daughters in mind.

Thursday, May 25, 2006

Sadness ~

Just four months ago he gave me my yearly checkup, Dr. C., the dermatologist. Yesterday I read in the paper that he had died. Fifty-six years old. On inquiry they told me he had hanged himself.