The Deep Dear Core of Things:Where Profoundest Healing Begins
AN ancient Summerian sought relief from suffering by praying:
May the fury of my lord’s heart
be quieted toward me;May the god who is not known
be quieted toward me;May the goddess who is not known
be quieted toward me;May the god whom I know or do not know
be quieted toward me;May the goddess whom I know or do not know
be quieted toward me.In ignorance I have eaten
that forbidden of my god;In ignorance I have set foot
on that prohibited by my goddess…When the goddess was angry with me,
she made me become ill.The god whom I know or do not know
has oppressed me;The goddess whom I know or do not know
has placed suffering upon me…
This is a heartbreaking prayer. It is the cry of someone who is lost in a spiritual scramble for relief from affliction, bewildered by inscrutable possibilities. What power, what deity, what force is in control of life?
Before we dismiss this invocation as an antiquated belief, we need to consider what it reveals about faith and healing. Although the language of unknown deities may not fit with our late twentieth century expression, we often feel at the mercy of powers beyond our control. The tenor of the prayer is not far from the spirit of panic that grips our hearts upon learning we have a critical medical problem.
The psalmists are no strangers to such anguish. Like the Summerian, they hurl at heaven the full force of their despair. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted within my breast” (Psalm 22:1,14). But notice this great difference: while the Summerian struggles to identify the source of the affliction – the god or goddess whom I do not know – the psalmist knows exactly where to turn: “My God, my God.” This is no unknown god or goddess, this is the precise personal center of reality, the source and sovereign of creation, the deep dear core of things, the twirler of the star dust who also knit the macrame of the double helix molecule, the heart of our own heart who is accessible in the moment of direst need, “My God, my God.”
Because the One to whom the psalmist prays is a centered and integrated reality, the psalmist does not get lost in the convolutions of a diffuse and fragmented spiritual search. There are hard and bitter things to deal with, but the psalmist is liberated to express these without qualifications, while the Summerian expends spiritual energy in ways that can only magnify the anguish. Feeling at the mercy of unknown powers expands the burden ofthe Summerian’s suffering. The impenetrable shadow of having broken some undisclosed cosmic taboo deepens the affliction.
Even though the theology of the Summerian may be far removed from us who live after the scientific revolution, pastors and chaplains will recognize in the Summerian’s prayer a spiritual desperation that continues to characterize human suffering. When people are lost in such labyrinthine torments, it is difficult if not impossible for them to gather together the spiritual/psychological energies that would aid the process of their healing.
But when we have faith enough to cry “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” then our fragmented selves are drawn together. Faith assures us that God will not reject us for voicing our deepest hurt. Tbe faith that empowers us to pray with the honesty and fervor of the psalmist has a salutary impact upon our whole being. Throwing the full force ofour despair and hope at God opens us to realities larger than our finite sensate selves. By freeing the expression of the heart’s burden, faith makes us more accessible to the currents of healing that are available through medical care, through the support o fthose who love us, and through the symbols and rituals that remind us that God is working in and through all of those who care for us.
In some shadowed corner of the Summerian’s soul,there was at least a glimpse of how wonderful such a healing faith might be. For the Summerian prayer ends with these words:
May thy heart,
like the heart o f a real mother,
be quieted toward me;Like a real mother (and) a realfather
may it be quieted toward me.
This irrepressible human yearning for the eternally reliable parent resonates with much that is in the Psalter, and for some o f the psalmists it is a yearning taken beyond invocation to realization:
I am calm and tranquil
like a weaned child
resting in its mother’s arms
my whole being at rest (Psalm 131:2).
“My whole being at rest” proceeds from a faith that is directed toward the center of all being, the One to whom I cry in my most desperate pain: “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?”
This, then, is the profoundest healing: not the unrealistic expectation that I will be cured of every illness or pain I suffer in life, but discovering that no matter what I face I can cry with the full force of my soul to the source and center of all that is and I will be heard and sustained in ways that grant to me an indestructible value and dignity. To trust this great truth with all that I am is to know what it means to be healed by faith in God.
Sometimes this healing will contribute to being cured of my affliction, relieved of my pain. Sometimes it will not. But even in grief we are healed by God’s identification with our suffering. For me at least, this divine identification with our pain is a large part ofwhat the passion of Christ signifies.
Healing this profound moves us to the outer boundaries of language. And so I conclude not with an explanation but with a lament which gives witness to the healing that is beyond all our powers of rational cognition.
God weeps with us who weep and mourn,
God’s tears flow down with ours,
and God’s own heart is bruised and worn
from all the heavy hours
of watching while the sours bright fire
burned lower day by day,
and pulse and breath and love’s desire
dimmed down to ash and clay.Through tears and sorrow, God, we share
a sense o f your vast grief:
the weight o f bearing every prayer
for healing and relief,
the burden of our questions why,
the doubts that they engage,
and as our friends and lovers die,
our hopelessness and rage.And yet because, like us, you weep,
we trust you will receive
and in your tender heart will keep
the ones for whom we grieve
while with your tears our hearts will taste
the deep dear core of things
from which both life and death are graced
by love’s renewing springs.(1996 Thomas H. Troeger)
(Written at the request of the American composer, Sally Ann Morris, after the loss of a dear friend to AIDS. The composer supplied a haunting minor melody and sought words from me for the music.)
