I just finished reading Hannah Coulter, a novel by Wendell Barry - a philosopher and writer who has long impressed me. The story is soothing. There is a beautiful rhythm, a quietness, a rightness.
One passage spoke to my condition right now, and gave me hope. I struggle with the religious tone, but I resound with the sentiment.
It is this body of our suffering that Christ was born into, to suffer it Himself and to fill it with light, so that beyond the suffering we can imagine Easter morning and the peace of God on our little earthly homelands...
We have forgotten the Light, I think. We stay bound in the suffering - stuck in the swamp again! The Light, though, the illumination, it lifts us out of the suffering, offers grace and forgiveness and release - I hope.
But Christ's living unto death in this body of our suffering did not end the suffering. He asked us to end it, but we have not ended. We suffer the old suffering. Eventually, in loving, you see that you have given yourself over to the knowledge of suffering in a state of war that is always going on.
Perhaps I have never been "in loving."
I love you as much as I can,
Clare
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