… in the dark.

‘Suffering is the undercurrent and bedrock of life, the Buddha said.’ So Buechner, the preacher, begins. And what Buechner goes on to say is for any human of any religion.

He speaks of pain. He acknowledges: living is hurting, and to pretend otherwise is to die slowly from the inside out.

‘Get over it,’ we’re usually told. In so many words, ‘just sweep it under the rug.’ ‘Move on, for God’s sake.’

Or not. For God’s sake, or mine or yours, stop. Stop what you’re doing and dress your wounds, stymie the flow of blood. Look at yourselves: we are a nation asking for infection.

Laugh all you want at the idea of therapy. Or, if you prefer, slap a diagnostic label on the emotional. No one’s asking you to wear your heart on your sleeve. But please – for the love of God or your self or anyone you might have it in you to care about – admit you have a heart, in all the ancient metaphysical senses of the word. Because, at the moment, asking you to ‘open up’ is like trying to draw blood from a stone. Or, if you rather, like trying to pierce that thick skin you’re so inordinately proud of.

We are not alone. Even if you don’t believe in God, at least believe in each other, believe in something like humanity. Which, I need to believe, is more than self-control and rock-hard stoicism. Being human surely must involve more than keeping the chaos at bay, more than maintaining a semblance of normality, more than pretending everything is okay until, by all measurable standards, it is. Appearances are deceiving. Wait, no … appearances are bullshit.

We’re fucking dead on our feet. We try to bury everything – all that shit we feel – and we end up living in graves.

You can dismiss this as merely the tirade of a woman: the only sex to whom the term ‘hysteria’ has been applied. Attribute it, why don’t you, to ‘that time of month.’ Were I to scream at the top of my lungs, I’d be met with laughter, or institutionalized. Maybe, in the end, it’s the same thing. But I’m writing this because I bet I’m not the only one living, and smiling, behind bars.

However, if you’d rather, here are the sensible words of a rational writer, a man – someone you may be more inclined to take seriously:

‘Our penchant for control and predictability, our commitment to quantity, our pursuit of stability and security – all this gives us a sense of priority and an agenda that is concerned to reduce the element of surprise and newness in our lives. And when newness and surprise fail, there is not likely to be graciousness, healing, or joy. Enough critics have made the point that when experiences of surprise and newness are silenced in our lives, there is no amazement, and where there is no amazement, there cannot be the full coming to health, wholeness, and maturity.’ (Walter Brueggeman)

If you care to be  affected (or if you simply care) in any way that counts, any way that could potentially throw you off balance or even, heaven forbid, incline you to change, please find yourself a copy of Secrets in the Dark and weep with an 80-year-old man who freely admits he is still growing up and sometimes not growing at all. All that Frederick Buechner asks (well, he doesn’t really ask anything, but the least you can do…) is honesty in return for his.

To return to my original quote, there’s a reason they’re called the Four Noble Truths. And I guess that’s why most of the living I see looks like lying.