"All arguments in justification of suffering provoke bitter resentment against the author. You would like to know how I behave when I am experiencing pain, not writing books about it. You need not guess, for I will tell you; I am a great coward. But what is that to the purpose? When I think of pain - of anxiety that gnaws like fire and loneliness that spreads out like a desert, and the heartbreaking routine of monotonous misery, or again of dull aches that blacken our whole landscape or sudden nauseating pains that knock a man's heart out at one blow, of pains that seem already intolerable and then are suddenly increased, of infuriating scorpion-stinging pains that startle into maniacal movement a man who seemed half dead with his previous tortures - it 'quite o'ercrows my spirit'.(shakespeare) If I knew any way of escape I would crawl through sewers to find it. But what is the good of telling you about my feelings? You know them already: they are the same as yours. I am not arguing that pain is not painful. Pain hurts. That is what the word means. I am only trying to show that the old Christian doctrine of being made "perfect through suffering" is not incredible. To prove it palatable is beyond my design.
God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world."
Is there anyone out there in blogblog land who has escaped pain? If so, better pinch yourself, you might be a mere mirage. If you have not escaped pain, did you not LEARN from it? If not, better kick yourself in the arss, you might be a moron. Like I quoted in the last blog from the same author, " the pains you give me are more precious than all other gain". Rick and I have said to eachother and everyone else, that these past 6 months of exquisite pain we would not trade for anything else this world can give us. We have learned so much in a short time that could only have been done this way. Time is fleeting by and we, all of us, have so much to learn...or, we live in a clouded faerie planet. Like a shirt I saw said, "In my world everyone is a pony, eats rainbows and poops butterflies." What did YOU have for breakfast?!
