Last Friday I was returning from a school attended through the National Guard.
I was in uniform and a woman stopped me in the terminal and wanted to bless me. Far be it for me to lecture someone about casting pearls before rabbits but she then told me to make certain before I enter combat to recite Psalm 91. She recounted a legend of dubious believability concerning WW1.
Apparently, while American units engaged in 3 prominent battles were sustaining casualty rates in the 90-percentile range but one American general commanded his men to recite Ps. 91 and as such they were spared any fatalities.
The first thought in my mind was: horse shit.
This is not to poo-poo the notion of miracles out-of-hand. If there be a God and Bugs Bunny is indeed created in His image then nothing should forbid us from entertaining the possibility of miracles.
Rather, I was upset by this notion that a personal God could so easily be reduced to some mechanistic shamanism.
And then my discontent grew further.
I wondered why anyone should pray to be delivered from pain and suffering. Surely we must all die and so few of us meet with an agreeable death. Either we die decrepit and broken or we are killed while vitality still courses through us. Either option is disappointing in the extreme.
But--if there be a God--death may be beyond the original divine plan but death and suffering are creatures of the Creator and the Creator being the embodiment of all that is Good then death and suffering descend from the Good.
Simply put: they are not punishments, they are remedies. They are the membrane between the world you are born into and the choice between two deathless worlds where you must choose either reconciliation and communion with the Creator or rejection.
Praying away pain?
It is voodoo and it is an insult to that choice.
Consider...
Tsaras is the transliteration for the Hebrew word for leprosy.
In many rabbinic commentaries it is also synonymous with sin.
People tend to think of leprosy as a rotting disease. This would be incorrect. The disease attacks the peripheral nervous system. The deformities, blindness and hideous injuries are, counter-intuitively but far more allegorically significant, self-inflicted.
People suffering from leprosy cannot feel how heavy they step. They can literally trod so heavily or misstep they injure themselves because they cannot sense misuse of their own limbs.
Victims of the disease cannot feel when their eyes become dry and so they do not blink, leading to blindness.
Wounds never heal because there is no sensation of injury.
Now consider the stories of the cleansing of the lepers.
What was restored to them was the gift of pain. While so many pray to have their pains removed from them only the cleansed leper can speak to the beauty of the ability to know when you are harming yourself.
Do we not describe someone who has over-consumed entertainments that focus on sex and/or violence as becoming "desensitized"? The epistle to the Hebrews speaks of this when is notes, "there is pleasure in sin for a season" but the pleasure soon deserts the sinner.
Consider the single most dangerous person is the sociopath, a person who has no sensation of doing wrong. They are untouched by sensations of pity or pangs of guilt. They are lepers on a psychological level.
On a personal note (and please, no expressions of pity; I'm a big bunny) I grew up from the time I can first remember at age 5 and 6 until I left for the Army at age 18 witnessing an incessant world of alcoholism, domestic violence, drug abuse, disease and suicide from every single adult ever to enter my life.
As I watched parents and grandparents grow sick and in the latter case, die-off I remember an absolute emotional void. I did not grieve for any of them. I'm not capable of it. I do not even feel enough for them to be upset about the fact I do not grieve.
I see the threads for those of you suffering with the loss of a loved one and I can only feel fascination wondering what it is to have such feelings. I do not mean to trivialize anyone's loss but I never comment because I have no frame of reference, only a cold, sterile view from the outside. What some of you find heart-shattering I find enviable.
You should be grateful for your pain...
...and never--never--pray for your pain to be taken away from you.
I assure you: you will not enjoy the sensation.
