He has not learned to live

Every country I enter stings my heart.  My girlfriend and I are foreigners living in Spain.  Her family is mostly in Honduras and mine is split between the the U.S. and Thailand.  Every day of our lives one of us is missing someone we love.  This Christmas the five of us in my family of origin made massive traveling efforts and shared a home and a country for 6 days. My heart sang with happiness on the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th day.  But it ached for my girlfriend back in Spain each day of the trip.    

On the 6th day my brother returned to work and I felt another sting of sadness.  On the 8th day my sister hugged me goodbye with tears in her eyes and started her drive home.  I walked to the backyard for a tearful moment before returning inside. Then, Dad, and Mom, and I sat together in the emptier house, knowing that my upcoming flight would complete the rupture.     

That night I walked the quiet neighborhood with my mom and was surprised by a thought that leapt out of me “It seems like God is so heartless”.  Why would an all-powerful being rule a world of constant unmet longing?  My life in Spain seems fated and right, so how is it that it carries so much pain? 

There’s a poem I have meditated on for a decade.  This piece of it sounds inside of me:

And he who has not learned to know

How false Life’s sparkling bubbles show

How bitter are the drops of woe

He has not learned to live

This year I have taken big gulping mouthfuls from the Goblet of Life and I have tasted amazing pleasures and bitter woe.  The bitter woe is unavoidable, unless we hide from the path before us.  I think this is Longfellow’s point.  

I think about my God who seems heartless and I think about a truly good parent.  A wise father leads us through painful paths for our own good and for the sake of what is right.  He is purposeful and caring and, in the midst of any necessary pain, he comforts his child.  I have seen these traits in my God.  My pain does not refute Him and it does not condemn Him.  I think about another section of the same poem:

Then in Life’s goblet freely press

The leaves that give it bitterness

Nor prize the colored waters less

For in thy darkness and distress

New light and strength they give  

Pain with a known end is easier to endure.  We look ahead and draw strength from the future where the pain is gone.  This is the most hope Longfellow offers us in the reflection we are using.  The pain of today will not last.

I pledge you in this cup of grief

Where floats the fennel’s bitter leaf

The Battle of our Life is brief

The alarm – the struggle – the relief

Then sleep we side by side

I’ll quote an even older text, because I think our poet left something out.  We have not learned to live until we have tasted life’s bitter pain.  But we have not learned wisdom until we embrace God’s offer of joy.  It is an offer of hope beyond our sorrows.

I am sure 

That neither death nor life

Nor angels nor rulers

Nor things present nor things to come

Nor powers 

Nor height nor depth

Nor anything else in all creation

Will be able to separate us from the love of God

In Christ Jesus our Lord