Pandemic, Palms and Spirituality

Drawing by Mary Erickson

Suffering never leaves us the same. Even after the pain and struggle and fear subside, we do not return to exactly the same person we were before that suffering.

Powerful experiences, like the present pandemic, force us to re-evaluate who we are and our place in the world. People talk about gaining a “new perspective,” or that events like this “put things into perspective.” In spiritual terms, this is having a mountaintop experience. You find yourself able to “rise above” and look at things from a new vantage point.

Now, we tend to think of mountaintop experiences as being positive. In spirituality they often are, but they can also be difficult and painful experiences. We may feel like we are “falling over the edge,” as fear and uncertainty grip us. Traumatic experiences never leave us the same, and they push us either towards greater suffering or new forms of enlightenment (and often, in the process, some combination of the two). To speak in spiritual terms, suffering either pushes us away from the world, other people and God, or it pushes us toward the world, other people and God. 

Palm Sunday, or Passion Sunday, as it is also called, represents that struggle. Jesus enters Jerusalem on a donkey, a symbol of coming in peace. The people celebrate with palm branches, ready to enjoy the Passover rituals and the anointing of Jesus as their leader. But the tables are quickly turned, as the palms turn to ash and Jesus, the Suffering Servant, is crucified and yet, in the midst of his horrible passion, reaches out in love to the whole world.

Traumatic experiences and suffering either scare us into our own shells, and dull us to pain and suffering, or they push out into the world and other people’s lives, as we try to feel and understand their pain and fears, and meet that suffering with compassion and love. This can become a new perspective that actually helps us deal with our own suffering as well as becoming people of deeper and greater love for all others and the world.

We may move towards seeing the world as a dangerous, fearful place, other people as competitors for scarce resources and tests and medical procedures, and God as one who has failed to protect us and those we love and thus as One who, in the end, cannot really be trusted.

Or we may see the world as a place in need of healing, other people as fellow journeyers who need our love and are willing to give their love to us, and God as one who is with us in our suffering and trying to work through it to give us a new perspective, greater compassion and a deeper trust that God is always at work with us in the world to bring healing and hope.

Father Richard Rohr, Franciscan Friar, theologian and spiritual writer in Albuquerque, New Mexico, writes about the present pandemic:

"There is no doubt that this period will be referred to for the rest of our lifetimes.  We have a chance to go deep, and to go broad. Globally, we're in this together. Depth is being forced on us by great suffering, which, as I like to say, always leads to great love . . . .Now is no time for an academic solidarity with the world. Real solidarity needs to be felt and suffered. That's the real meaning of the word "suffer": to allow someone else's pain to influence us in a real way. We need to move beyond our own personal feelings and take in the whole. . . .  I hope this experience will force our attention to the suffering of the most vulnerable. Love always means going beyond yourself to otherness. It takes two. There has to be the lover and the beloved. We must be stretched to encounter with otherness, and only then do we know it's love. Love alone overcomes fear and is the true foundation that lasts. (I Corinthian's 13:13) [Richard Rohr, Center for Action and Contemplation, March 19, 2020]  

Not only can suffering open our hearts in love to others, but also loving deeply leads to greater suffering. Indeed, the price we pay for love is suffering. This is experienced most deeply in loss and grief, and the deeper our love the greater the sense of loss and grief. The suffering of loss and grief also never leaves us the same, either pushing us away from God and others, or toward them in wonder at the beauty of this complex world and amazement at the richness of the diversity of cultures and peoples.

Spirituality, of course, is the search for a deeper and fuller relationship with God and others. Father Rohr goes on to say that “there are only two major paths by which the human soul comes to God: the path of great love, and the one of great suffering. Both finally come down to great suffering—because if we love anything greatly, we will eventually suffer for it. When we’re young, God hides this from us. We think it won’t have to be true for us. But to love anything in depth and over the long term, we eventually must suffer."  [Richard Rohr, March 20, 2020]

We often live under the illusion that we and those we love can be protected from pain and suffering and death. A pandemic shatters that illusion. We are all in this together and we are all vulnerable. Yes, most of us will not die, but some of us will, and we don’t know which ones of us this disease will take. In that sense this pandemic is the great equalizer, and we each must choose now whether we will move toward or away from each other.

We can try to crawl into psychological and spiritual caves, hoarding what we need to protect ourselves, or, like thousands of retired doctors and nurses in New York and neighboring states, leave those caves and go into the suffering of the world, in many cases without the necessary weapons with which health professionals normally do battle. And, while we try to stay safe at home, every day workers go forth to stock grocery shelves, clerk in those stores and deliver items we need to our doorsteps, at risk to their own health. In a world in which we lament the lack of true heroes, they are all around us every day now. Many of them (perhaps even most) may not think of themselves as spiritual people, but they are choosing life over death, and even risking their own lives when they make that choice.

“Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.” [James 1:17, NRSV]