Aching

  These days, I am dealing with pain. For some time now, my daily routine has involved naproxen twice a day or ibuprofen several times a day, carrying on with my arthritic knees. Right now I am in that time before a procedure, when they require that you stop all NSAIDS. And so I’m relying on acetaminophen to do what it can do, and beyond that I am simply doing less.

In all of this, I’m not really wrestling with the Problem of Pain. I do have a framework to think about that, of course. Anybody who’s really wrestled with their theology figures out where they’re going to stand on that, however, difficult that stand might be. No, I am quite clear that the appropriate answer to the question of, “why me?“is just “why not me?“

Years ago, when I was the chaplain who helped open a small suburban hospital, I was asked to participate in the process improvement committee for pain management. The nurse was coordinating. It said that was because, “pain is always a spiritual issue, isn’t it?“ I had to agree. Even if you’re not going to stop and think about where paying fits in issues of justice or compassion or what God has in mind, you have to have some understanding of how pain is or is not part of the nature of things.

And to me, that’s largely what it is: it’s part of the nature of things. It’s part of things being fallen. It’s also among those opportunities to show compassion. I cannot go with those who want to say that pain is somehow redemptive, although it can be educational. I have said for many years that any cleric that says here she has no pain is lying, and that any cleric that has not learned from his or her pain is dangerous.

But mostly, day-to-day, pain is simply part of the nature of things. We help one another with it, including by discovering new ways to ease it. We do those things we need to sometimes in spite of it.

And that, really, is part of pain being a spiritual issue. We learn something of who we are as individuals and how we fit into a community when we have pain. Sometimes that pain is acute and sharp, and sometimes that pain is chronic and nagging, a thorn in the side. In any case, I think about what pain means in my life, as it ebbs and flows, and as it continues to connect me with the nature of things.