Few things divide us as emotionally and decisively as does the issue of abortion. Any doubts I might have had about that were put to rest last week when I attended a conference given by a Catholic theologian, Marjorie Maguire, who spoke out in favor of abortion by demand. Perhaps there were only about 100 people there, but the whole world might have been present. In that small group, everything showed up – the magnitude of this issue, the deep emotions, the pathos, the anger, the woundedness, the righteousness, the hopelessness of the division. It was a microcosm of the church and the world on this issue. Whoever cares was represented.

There were militants present for whom abortion on demand is the issue, the inalienable right of women. The wounds contingent upon a past and present sexism and oppression, for them, crystallized around this issue: “Abortion is our right – anyone who denies us this choice is sexist, oppressive, non-compassionate, the enemy!” Present, too, were the wounded, the women who have had abortions and those who are struggling with that choice. Never far from tears, this group sits quietly, afraid, confused about guilt, feeling bitterly alone in their choice. Then there were the vocal pro-life advocates, who speak and shout out a pain that comes from the deep belief that abortion is the callous taking of human life. This group doesn’t sit quietly. For them, abortion is so intolerable that it demands that body and soul be thrown in front of its perpetrators, regardless of consequence. I sat with a more silent group of pro-lifers. We sat, my friends and I, muzzled, feeling guilty about our silence, but not knowing what to do. We believe that abortion is wrong, but are not sure what concretely, barring prayer, can be done in a situation such as this public forum. What will help and what will hurt? Are we being respectful or just too chicken to risk ourselves? We left the hall in pain.

Finally, there was Marjorie Maguire herself, a perplexing anomaly – pro-choice, but antiabortion; a Catholic, but strongly against the official Catholic position on abortion; feminine, respectful, insightful, intelligent, compassionate at points, yet given to displaying a surprising callousness and narrowness on other key points (e.g., “If I conceived a defective child I would abort” … as if only the healthy and the whole have a right to live.) I left the hall silent, guilty. I speak now, to assuage my guilt and to vent the moral spleen. In fairness, it must be admitted that Dr. Maguire said many meaningful, profound and challenging things. Among other things, I was impressed that she was not speaking out of hatred, out of wound. She refused to ridicule, didn’t play for cheap applause, and refused consistently to appeal to the baser and crueler instincts of her audience. This she might have done; the opportunities were there.

Insightfully, she pinpointed the deepest reasons for abortion, namely, sexism, sexual irresponsibility, ignorance and selfishness within our culture as a whole. The woman who stands at the reception desk at a Morgentaler clinic is merely the inevitable product, and victim, of a culture such as ours. She is the tip of the cone of sexism and irresponsibility. She is the one who deserves our compassion, and we are the ones who deserve to bear the guilt.

And, in the end, Maguire said that abortion is always wrong, always a negativity. But I was less impressed after that. The bottom line was that she argued for abortion on demand, submitting “if someone depends upon someone else’s body for life, that someone does not have an inalienable right to life.” To illustrate that, she used the analogy of someone being asked to donate an organ for a transplant. Imagine that there was somewhere on a computer, precise information about your blood type, organ types, etc. One day you receive a phone call telling you that the computer has matched your organ type to someone in need of a transplant.You are asked to donate one of your bodily organs for transplant. Now, to donate such an organ, at great physical cost to yourself, is an heroic and generous act. But no court may demand that you do it. It must be your choice. So, too, for abortion, she argued. An unwanted fetus demands your body and your commitment to come to term. No court should be able to demand that you donate your body. That must be a free choice. Unfortunately, if that were true, then, I submit, newborn babies also have no inalienable right to live. Like an unborn fetus, they, too, demand upon someone else’s body to survive. This could be viewed as an unfair imposition upon a woman’s rights.

Her views on when a fetus becomes a person are interesting, nuanced and too complex to be responsibly discussed in a short article. She made me think; e.g., “If a fetus is a person already from the moment of conception, then God is the great abortionist since there are many more spontaneous abort ns than there are therapeutic ones.” Ultimately, however, my judgement on her position is negative. Her compassion is too selective. It does not embrace equally the strong and the handicapped. It shows a preference for the former. For all of us, ultimately, the hermeneutics we use for discerning values and goodness are something higher than logic. Love is the eye. We discern and choose value by looking at the lives of those we most admire and feel most confident to entrust ourselves to. In the end, and I am sure this is also true for Marjorie Maguire, we feel the most trust for those who have the most compassion for the weak and the unwhole.

For this reason, I do not place my trust with those who would argue for abortion on demand.

It’s been a bad spring; not for weather, but for suicides. Warm restless winds have stirred both nature and the human spirit and for some it’s been more than they could handle. Most of us have been raised to think of suicide as the ultimate despair, the final and unforgivable sin. A true suicide could be this, but almost all actual suicides have little to do with sin and despair. We used to think that they had. Suicide, it was argued, was an act of despair, a refusal to hope, an irrevocable closing of oneself to forgiveness and new life. As G.K. Chesterton once put it, suicide is the refusal to take an interest in existence; the refusal to take an oath of loyalty to life. A person who commits suicide, he contended, defiles every flower for refusing to live for its sake.

Chesterton would be correct if people did in fact commit suicide out of despair. Normally, they don’t. Their propensity for suicide is, in most cases, a psychological illness, a terminal disease which is no more sinful or indicative of despair than are cancer, high blood pressure and heart attacks. We are creatures of body and soul – either can break down. Some die from physical cancer, high blood pressure or heart attacks. Others die from emotional cancer, emotional high blood pressure and emotional heart attacks. In both cases, the death is not freely chosen. In both cases, there is no despair. Normally too we see Judas’ death as the prototype of despair. Poor Judas! He betrayed Jesus and then was unable to accept forgiveness and so took a rope and hanged himself – and Jesus himself commented that it would be better for him if he had never been born. To Judas, we contrast Peter who also betrayed Jesus. Peter, however, was able to accept forgiveness. Unlike Judas who despaired, Peter went out, had a good cry, accepted Christ’s forgiveness and became the rock upon which the church was founded.

But such an interpretation, regardless of how deeply it is enshrined in Christian piety and popular tradition, is simplistic and, in the end, itself despairs of the compassion of God. First of all, Christ’s words that it would be better for Judas if he had never been born, were written by the apostles (who out of hurt pronounced their own very human judgement on Judas). More importantly, the dynamics involved in accepting forgiveness and love are far more tied up with how much unconditional love we have been given than they are with virtue and faith. If, when we are little children, those around us love us in such a way that we have a sense that we are lovable even when we make mistakes and if those around us give us the sense that love does not have to be earned or merited, then we will grow up to be persons who are able to accept forgiveness as Peter did.

Perhaps the difference between Peter and Judas was not so much that Peter loved Jesus more, but that Peter had come from a more loving home, that he had had a better mother, and that he had been given more unconditional love (as a free gift). Because of this he could accept forgiveness. Looked at humanly, Judas despaired and Peter didn’t. I doubt, however, that such an assessment is correct. If it were then love and eternal life would be only for the lucky and the strong. But God’s compassion and understanding is not so limited as is ours. One of the articles of our creed is that Christ descended into hell. Among other things, this teaches that, by dying as he did, Christ loves us in such an unconditional way that he can descend into our private hells. His love contains such empathy and compassion that it can penetrate all the barriers we construct out of hurt and fear and enter right into our despair and hopelessness. After the resurrection, we see Christ, time and again, going through “closed doors” to breathe the spirit of peace and love upon huddled, frightened and miserable disciples.

He still descends into hell, entering closed hearts, to breathe peace and love in places where there is huddling in fear and hurt. Our ability for compassion and empathy and unconditional love is limited. When we meet certain barriers, we are helpless and can go no further. But God’s compassion can go through closed doors and closed hearts. It descends into hell. Most suicide victims are trapped persons, caught up in a private emotional hell which is an illness and not a sin. Their suicide is a desperate attempt to end unendurable pain, much like a man whose clothing has caught fire might throw himself through a window. They are not, on the other side, met by our human judgements, but by a heart, a companion, a love and a Mother whose understanding and tenderness is beyond our present imagination. She descends into their hell, holds them to her breast and breathes the spirit of peace and love over their fear and hurt. Then finally they experience that unconditional love and tensionless peace which eluded them during their lives on earth.

Certain questions bring us pain. The question of love is frequently one of them. Have you ever experienced a love that gave you the sense that you were lovable despite everything that is weak and lacking in you? Have you ever been loved unconditionally? Often times these questions make us ache. We look at our lives and see a searing lack of unconditional love. The impression is that nobody loves us in a way that assures us at our deepest levels that we are lovable. Our friendships, our loves, our families, our marriages appear to be anything but matrixes of unconditional love. At least, so it seems. But there is a confusion here. When we think of love, we think of affection. These are not always the same thing.

One kind of love is generally expressed through affection, through positive stroking, physical caressing, emotional affirmation and sexual intimacy. But our experience of these is usually weak, only rarely is there enough physical touch, emotional stroking, expressed affection or satisfying sexual expression in our lives. Because of this, most times we feel unloved and perhaps even unlovable. But these gestures of love are not identical with love. Sometimes in our friendships, marriages, families and communities, there is beneath the lack of physical and emotional stroking, beneath the sexual frustrations, and beneath the harsh and angry words which are frequently exchanged, an unconditional concern and commitment. There is unconditional love. Unfortunately, because the love isn’t expressed in affection, that love remains largely unperceived.

When that happens then we do not feel that we are loved and there are negative consequences for our self-image. One part of us – the physical, emotional, sexual and affective part of us – begins to lose confidence and progressively atrophies. We begin to feel that nobody loves us and we begin to identify love entirely with what we are lacking, namely, with physical, emotional, sexual and affective stroking. Just recently I dealt with a middle-aged lady who felt like this. She had grown up in a family in which care and stability abounded, but physical affection was never expressed. She had remained single and, save for a few dissatisfying sexual encounters which had been entered into because of depression and desperation, had never expressed physical affection in her life. Now she was convinced that she had never been loved. When she thought of love she filled with pain, aching and bitterness. Yet, when she was able to move beyond the hurt and look at her life objectively, she saw some things which surprised her. She had always been loved, solidly, deeply, unconditionally. She was also very lovable.

Her strict Irish family had never been able to tell her through words, physical touch or emotional stroking that they loved her. But they had in fact loved her despite being affectively inarticulate. Their love had expressed itself in commitment, generosity, concern and fidelity. But these were given too starkly, without affection being expressed, and this experience had remained constant throughout the rest of her life. In her friendships and relationships invariably the same pattern resurfaced. She had indeed been loved through more than 50 years but, at one level of her being, had not known it. But at another level of her being she had known it. While she protested that she had a weak self-image and felt unlovable, she radiated stability and confidence and lovableness at every level of her being, save the physical and sexual one. There she felt insecurity and lacked confidence. Her story is a paradigm for all of us, God’s poor, the little ones who go through life too-starved for affection, convinced that we aren’t loved nor lovable, burdened with a bad self-image. We think we are not loved, but beneath it all we are strongly loved and lovable and possess a tremendous confidence and stability because of it.

Equally as tragic is the reverse: Many persons have a lot of physical, emotional and sexual affection in their lives. Yet, underneath that, they do not feel loved nor lovable.In their case, the self-image inflicts the opposite demon upon them. It lets them operate with considerable social, affective and sexual confidence, but it strips them of confidence and stability in virtually every other area. There are many lessons in all of this, not the least of which is that we need to express affection, we need to touch each other physically and we need to affirm each other more explicitly. We need to express affection more, to stroke each other physically and emotionally into wholeness. But we need also to realize that love is more than this. Even when there isn’t a satisfying affection in our lives, our eyes need not fill with tears every time we contemplate whether or not we are loved.

I am old enough to have known another time. Things were different when I was little. Many of life’s pleasures weren’t available and people made due, celebrating what there was to celebrate and not over-expecting. Back then, few expected or demanded the whole pie. Heaven was seen as something for later. My parents and their generation lived a simple spiritual philosophy: This life is but a short time of waiting, “mourning and weeping in a vale of tears!” It is not so important to be happy. Today there are sneers about their tears. But that sombre philosophy of theirs got them through life with their faith and loves intact and, ironically, probably equipped them with a greater capacity for enjoyment and happiness than we possess today. There is today too little talk, in our churches and in the world, about the “vale of tears” and the incompleteness of our present lives.

Spiritualities of the resurrection and psychologies of self-actualization, whatever their other strengths, no longer give us permission to be in pain, to be un whole, ill, unattractive, aged, unfulfilled or even just alone on a Friday night.  The idea is all too present that we can only be happy if we somehow fulfil every hunger within us, if our lives are completely whole, consummated and we are never alone on a Friday night. Unless every pleasure that we yearn for can be tasted, we cannot be happy. Because of this we over expect. We stand before life and love in a greedy posture and with unrealistic expectations, demanding the resolution of all our eros and tension. However, life, in this world, can never give us that. We are pilgrims on earth, exiles journeying towards home. The world is passing away. We have God’s word for it. And we need God’s word for it! Too much in our experience today militates against the fact that here in this life all symphonies remain unfinished. Somehow, we have come to believe that a final solution for the burning tensions within us lies within our present grasp. I am not sure who or what gives us this idea.

Maybe it is the movie and television industries with their leading men and leading ladies who are presented to us as already redeemed, persons who are gorgeous, immersed in love and meaning, and who have the wherewithal within their grasp to taste whatever life has to offer.  But something has led us to the belief that we need not put up with tension and frustration and that there are persons in this life who are already enjoying a redeemed life. That belief, however unconscious and unexpressed, lies at the root of much of our restlessness and unhappiness today. None of us are whole, not even our gorgeous leading men and ladies. Yet because we believe that somehow, we can or should be whole, we go through life denigrating what chances we have for rest and happiness.

A simple example serves to illustrate: In our culture we suffer from what might be termed “Friday Night Syndrome.” Few people can stay home quietly and rest on a Friday night. Why? Is it because we are not tired and ideally could not appreciate a nice quiet time. No! We cannot stay home quietly on Friday night because inside of us moves a restless demon that assures us that everyone in the whole world is doing something exciting on Friday night. Once that voice is heard, then our homes, our families and our commitments begin to look unexciting. Peace and restfulness slip away, and we are caught up in an insatiable restlessness. This example illustrates the basic principle: So much of our unhappiness comes from comparing our lives, our friendships, our loves, our commitments, our duties, our bodies and our sexuality to some idealized and non-Christian vision of things which falsely assures us that there is a heaven on earth. When that happens, and it does, our tensions begin to drive us mad, in this case, to a cancerous restlessness.

In a culture (and, at times, in a church) that tells us that no happiness is possible unless every ache and restlessness inside of us is fulfilled, how hard it is to be happy. How tragic it is to be alone! How tragic it is to be unmarried! How tragic it is to be married, but not completely fulfilled romantically and sexually! How tragic it is not to be good-looking! How tragic it is to be unhealthy, aged, handicapped! How tragic it is to be caught up in duties and commitments, small children and diapers and routine, which limit our freedom and relationships! How tragic it is to be poor! How tragic it is to go through life and not be able to taste every pleasure on earth! It almost isn’t worth living! There is wisdom and, yes, even comfort, in the old “mourning and weeping in this vale of tears” philosophy. Sometimes that expression was abused, and people forgot that the Creator did not just make us for life after death…He did also intend some life after birth! But those who lived that philosophy generally did not attempt to milk life for more than it could give them. Those who lived that philosophy were a lot less restless and greedy for experience than we are today. They could much more restfully enjoy God’s great gifts – life, love, youth, health, friendship and sexuality – even as they are limitedly given in this life. Those who lived that philosophy were, I am sure, much more restful on Friday nights!

At the Democratic national convention in San Francisco last summer, Jesse Jackson ended his address with a plea to everyone to vote according to conscience. A vote for conscience, he stated, is a vote for truth “and when conscience and truth win, the poor win; and when the poor win, women win; and when women win, children win; and when children win, we all win because they are the future!” It is uncertain whether the problem lies in our voting or with our consciences, but lately children haven’t been winning. Abortion has. Abortion, like the word of God, divides. It slips between the bone and marrow, within conscience, within families, within bodies, within our culture and it separates, making the one into two. Most of the rational arguments on both sides of this issue have already been articulated. What I submit here is not an argument but a challenge and a plea to women to examine how the women’s movement may be unfairly coloring this issue. My challenge is this: Look at what is happening within the feminist movement and discriminate, separate what is legitimate from what is a temporary and unhealthy overreaction. The influence that women’s groups have had on women regarding the question of abortion falls into the latter category.

As it stands right now the women’s movement has seized the abortion issue as its own issue, a women’s issue. It has linked the right to freely choose to have an abortion to the right to full equality. This is a disastrous and unfortunate connection which leaves everyone poorer, children, women and men. The arguments vary a little, but always there is the common denominator: “This is a women’s issue!” “Men don’t get pregnant!” “We have a right to our own bodies!” “If men got pregnant, the abortion laws would have been changed years ago!” These arguments are the result of an overreaction and an unhealthy hypersensitivity that is temporarily clouding many women’s thinking and robbing them of one of their most precious qualities, compassion. Too many women, I submit, are being sucked in by an excessive feminism which is making them defend positions (in this case, the right to abortion by demand) which are far from their true feminine nature. Thus, for example, there is the argument that abortion is a women’s issue. As if men should decide issues of war, economics, politics and the like, and women should decide about drapes, kids, day care and abortion. There are no women’s issues, just as there are no men’s issues. All these issues are everyone’s issues. But that is a fringe point.

More salient is the issue of femininity itself and how it is desperately needed to bring sanity to the issue of abortion. Radical feminism argues: “If men became pregnant, they would have changed the abortion laws years ago!” Sadly that is probably true. But it is more a commentary on the callousness of men than on the justness of abortion on demand. Men would have probably changed the laws, but they would have done so because they, men, were selfish, insensitive and unwilling to let their lives be upset by pregnancy and young children. Women, fortunately, have always been the ones who have been less selfish, who have let their lives be upset by pregnancy and children. Accordingly, they have also been the ones who have had a deeper sense of the sacred, the sacredness of life and the sacredness of children. It has been women who have always been the ones sensitive to the young, the helpless, the aged. They were, and to a large extent still are, the humanizing component in a too-macho, too-cold and too-unfeeling world. As men shot each other, women protected the children and bound up the wounds. Their greater sense of compassion stems from that. But the males kept the females away from the places where important decisions were taken. Men decided the issues of war, politics, economics, law, education and religion. Little wonder females eventually grew frustrated and angry.

I don’t doubt that if men could become pregnant that they would have long ago liberalized abortion laws. But that would just have added to an already unjust, cold, macho and inhuman system. Knowing men and knowing our history, I fear for a society where women no longer protect the helpless and the unborn. And so my challenge to women is this: Through having your lives upset by pregnancy and child-rearing, you have developed a compassion that, for now, men can only envy. Don’t jettison that in order to imitate a macho insensitivity to the helpless. Equality will not come as a result of punishing men by punishing the unborn. Challenge men, not the helpless. Men need to be challenged to allow their lives to be upset by pregnancy, children, the helpless, the weak and the aged. That part of the feminist movement that challenges here is eminently healthy. That part which demands, in the name of feminism, abortion on demand is not. Jesse Jackson stated that “when women win, children win; and when children win, we all win because they are the future!” Lately women have been winning…but children haven’t and the future hasn’t been winning either.

For many of us, I suspect, it gets harder each year to capture the mood of Christmas. About the only thing that still warms us is memories, memories of younger more naive days when lights and carols, Christmas trees and gifts, still excited us. For me, the very memories of myself as a child anticipating Christmas are a virtual Christmas in themselves. But we are adult now and so it seems in our world. Any joy of anticipation of Christmas is blunted by a commercialism which, like everything else in American life, is characterized by excess. By late October we are affronted by Christmas decorations, Santa Claus is around for all of November and in December we are force-fed a series of Christmas parties which rival the New York Marathon as an endurance test.  Christmas, 1984, can we crank up any real joy and genuine celebration?

It is not easy. Commercialism is a minor obstacle. More serious is 1984 itself. Can we, amid all the cruel revelations of this year, warm up to a season of tinsel and festivity? Can we sing Joy to the World in the face of India and Ethiopia? Does it mean anything to speak of peace even as we stockpile nuclear bombs and as strikes and unemployment leave millions embittered? And what about all this fuss about a 2,000 year-old baby when thousands of babies have had their lives aborted this year in our own true north strong and free? Are there any silent nights left? Too many nights in 1984 were punctured by an unsilence.

Moreover there are our own personal tragedies: lost health, lost loves, lost jobs, lost time, the death of loved ones, tiredness and frustration. How do we celebrate the birth of a redeemer in a world which appears shockingly unredeemed and with hearts which feel so heavy and unredeemed? The Christmas story is the most unusually potent story ever told. God comes down from heaven, takes on human flesh and ultimately ends all suffering. That story has altered the entire course of human history. Its power is unmatched.

But its power to survive and affect depends upon its truth and healing power and that truth and healing power can easily be distorted and perverted. Christmas is an incredible event, something which must be celebrated with kisses and drinks all around, with tinsel and lights and songs of joy. Anyone who really understands Christmas will want to be involved in an exchange of gifts. But it is not a magical event, a Cinderella story without midnight. When we understand it, we might well want to string up lights and sing its meaning in joyful carols. But we will see at the same time that, at its centre, lies an humiliation, a pain and a death which is not unlike what is being experienced in India, Ethiopia, on the strike lines, and in our own wounded and bored hearts. Incarnation is not yet resurrection. Flesh in Jesus, as in us, is human flesh, vulnerable, weak, incomplete and needy. Painfully full of limit, suffering. Christmas celebrates Christ’s birth into these things, not his removal of them. He redeems limit, evil, sin and pain. They are not abolished. There is a difference.

For this reason we can celebrate Christ’s birth without in any way denying or trivializing the real evil in our world and the very real pain in our lives. Christmas is a challenge to celebrate while still in pain.

The incarnate God is called Emmanuel, a name which means God-is-with-us. That fact does not mean immediate festive joy. Our world remains unwhole and the wars, strikes, selfishness and bitterness linger. Our hearts too remain unwhole and pain lingers. For a Christian, just as for everyone else, there will be incompleteness, illness, senseless hurt, broken dreams, cold hungry lonely days of bitterness and a virtual lifetime of inconsummation. Reality has its harshness and Christmas does not ask us to make-believe. The incarnation does not promise us heaven on earth. It promises heaven in heaven. Here, on earth, it promises us something else – God’s presence in our lives. This presence redeems because it is the sense that God is with us that empowers us to give up bitterness, to forgive and to move beyond narcissism. When God is with us then pain and happiness are not exclusive of each other and the agonies and riddles of life do not exclude deep meaning and deep joy.

As Avery Dulles once said: “Incarnation does not provide us with a ladder by which to escape from the ambiguities of life and scale the heights of heaven. Rather, it enables us to burrow deep into the heart of planet earth and find it shimmering with divinity.”  George Orwell prophesied that 1984 would be a truly horrible year with torture, double-think and a broken human spirit characterizing our world. To some extent that is true. We are a long ways from being whole. We remain deeply in exile. However, I plan to celebrate Christmas 1984 heartily. Maybe I won’t feel the exact excitement I once felt as a child when I was so excited about tinsel, lights, Christmas carols, and special gifts and special food. Some of those feelings won’t crank up anymore. But something else does crank up, namely, the sense that God is with us in the flesh.

The word became flesh. That’s true, even for 1984 – so let’s have kisses and drinks all around.

Dan Berrigan once commented that if Jesus returned to earth he would take a whip and drive out both the patients and doctors from all counselling and psychologists’ offices with the words: “Take up your couch and walk! You’ve been given skin to survive in this world!” There is wisdom and challenge in those words. God covered our nerves with skin, we are not so hypersensitive. He has also given us a remarkable resiliency and an incredible capacity to heal. We are tougher and more elastic than we actually think. I remember my first surprising reminder of this. As a young child playing hockey I was bullied and hit by a bigger kid. I fell and began to cry, convinced that I was seriously hurt. I waited vainly for the world to stop and for everyone to come and examine my hurt. But the game went on and I lay on the ice, ignored, until someone came and challenged me with the fact that I was not really hurt at all. I was only feeling sorry for myself and was quite capable, if I wanted, of continuing to play. It came as a surprise to realize that I was not so fragile after all. I could take a lick. It was humiliating, to be sure, but I was quite capable of bouncing back.

As we get older, the games, the bullying and the hurts become less physical, more psychological, more sophisticated. But one dynamic remains constant, most often we are not as hurt as we think. Invariably there is more self-pity than actual wound. As human beings we are, in fact, gifted with an incredible resiliency. Skin, bones, psyches, hearts, when pushed to it, these have a remarkable bounce. They don’t break so easily and, when they do, they have an unbelievable capacity to heal. We can take a fall, a hurt, a cut, a rejection. It doesn’t kill us, we heal; there is seldom an excuse for paralysis, never one for despair. We are tougher than we think. It is when we forget this that we get ourselves into trouble and find ourselves far away from the feast, happiness and celebration that God has put at the heart of life. The most incredible and challenging of all of Christ’s teachings is that we can in fact be happy, that we can celebrate and enjoy life, even though we and the world we live in are far from perfect. Mostly we do not believe this. Mostly we go through life protesting our right to despair, partly paralyzed by self-pity and limping when there is not enough reason to limp.

Silently or out loud, we tell God and others:  “If you knew how much I have been hurt, you wouldn’t tell me that I can be happy! If you only knew how fragile I am! If you only knew how sensitive I am and how easily I can be hurt! If you only knew how unfair it is for me. If you only knew how I have been rejected! If you only knew…! It is too late for me. I am too wounded!” But that posture and attitude is, in the end, a form of self-pity, a mini-masturbation which sells us short. It sells God short too for he endowed us with more than that. He gave us more resiliency, more bounce, more toughness, more capacity for healing and, God knows, more reason to hope than we allow ourselves in our hypersensitivity. It is good to be sensitive, but too often we are unhealthy hypersensitive. We think that our bones are broken when they aren’t, that our psyches and hearts don’t have any more bounce when they do, that a wound will never heal when it will, and that we are paralyzed when we aren’t. So we limp or lie down and offer a myriad of excuses which explain why we cannot be happy. The challenge is needed: take up your couch and walk, you’ve been given skin! We are tougher than we give ourselves credit for.

Knowing this should help us move out towards celebration, beyond our hurts. With the elasticity of body, psyche, and heart that God has given us we are not allowed to despair. Ultimately we can absorb anything and bounce back. Because of this we are allowed to make some mistakes and to take some bad falls. We will get hurt, but we may never say: “I hurt too much to enter the game of celebration again. I am beyond healing!” We are never beyond healing. Christ’s challenge to celebrate is uncompromising. It challenges us to our own capacities, to our own toughness, to love beyond hurt. It challenges us to risk great hurt. Nikos Kazantzakis starts his autobiography with these words:

“Three kinds of souls, three prayers: 1) I am a bow in your hands, Lord, draw me, lest I rot. 2) Do not overdraw me, Lord, I shall break. 3) Overdraw me, Lord, and who cares if I break!” When we know how resilient God has made us, we risk the third prayer.

Recently a lady came to see me who was suffering from a curious resentment. She was angry at God. Her feelings were vague and not clearly focused, but she felt that somehow God was to blame for her unhappiness. Life, she felt, was rapidly passing her by and she had already missed out on many chances for really living it. She was, and had been, a good lady, religious, moral, generous, living for others, faithful to her commitments. Now in her mid-50s she felt anger and resentment growing within her, an anger and resentment she was unable to really explain, accept or control. She was confused and unhappy. On the one hand, she did not regret her past life. She had been faithful, unselfish and religious. Yet, with her youth, health, sexual prowess, and opportunities fading, she felt frustrated, unneeded, unfulfilled, used, locked-in, and haunted by the thought that perhaps she had never made a decision for herself in her whole life.

Viewed one way, her virtue seemed like an accident, a conspiracy of circumstances. She wondered whether she had really chosen this or whether it had been forced upon her. Whenever she felt like that then she filled with regret and resentment. She regretted that she had always been so moral, religious and proper. In these moments too she would have to admit to herself that she secretly envied the amoral, the unvirtuous, all those who never felt, as she did, the yoke of domestication that eventually comes with morality and religion. At the root of all this was the feeling that she had been had, seduced by God. God was to blame. He, she assured me, had always been just real enough to hold her, but never real enough to fulfil her, at least not emotionally. So she was angry, and angry with herself for being angry. She was full of resentment and full of guilt for being resentful. Prayer was very difficult for her because she could not admit to herself that she was angry at God and so whenever she did try to pray it seemed artificial and contrived.

What does one say to a person like that? One begins by pointing out that her resentment and anger are already a high form of prayer, at least potentially so. Too often we are under the impression that God does not want us to struggle with him, that he prefers sheep who docilely acquiesce (even as they swallow hard on the bitterness that so spontaneously arises in the emotional, psychological and sexual mechanisms which he built into them). But God wants to be wrestled with. As Rabbi Heschel points out, ever since the day that Abraham argued with God over the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah, and Jacob wrestled with the angel, those close to God have also occasionally engaged in similar arguments. The refusal to accept the harshness of God’s ways in the name of his love is an authentic form of prayer. Indeed, the prophets and saints were not always in the habit of simply saying, “Thy will be done.” They often fought, challenged, squirmed and begged as a way of saying “Thy will be changed!” I suspect that sometimes they did annul divine plans. God wants to be struggled with, especially if we have been living in his house for awhile.

Why? Why would he want this? How can wrestling be a form of prayer? Wrestling can be a form of prayer precisely because it can be a form of love. People who live together in love for a long time must resolve many tensions. There is constant wrestling, much anger and occasional bitterness. But the struggling together, if persevered in, always leads to new depth in love. The lady I was describing earlier was, in fact, standing at the very edges of a new phase of love. She needed to pray through her bitterness first. As she stood at the edges of that new phase bent under the weight of God’s yoke, bitter and with the jealousy of Cain in her eyes, the same Father who had pleaded with the older brother of the prodigal son was also pleading with her, pleading with her to enter a new circle, the circle of those who feel compassion for God. Rabbi Heschel tells the story of a Polish Jew who became bitter and stopped praying “because of what happened in Auschwitz.” Later, however, he began praying again. When asked, “Why?” he replied: “I felt sorry for God.” This man had reached a new phase of love, that of affinity, of compassion. God’s concerns, God’s cause, God’s house, were now his too. But such a point is only reached after struggle, when anger and bitterness are transformed.

God invites and, I dare say, enjoys the struggle. As Nikos Kazantzakis puts it: “Every person partakes of the divine nature in both spirit and flesh. The struggle between God and the human person breaks out in everyone, together with the longing for reconciliation. “Most often this struggle is unconscious and short-lived. A weak soul does not have the endurance to resist the flesh for long. It grows heavy, becomes flesh itself, and the contest ends. The stronger the soul and the flesh, the more fruitful the struggle and the richer the final harmony. God does not love weak souls and flabby flesh. The Spirit wants to have to wrestle with flesh which is strong and full of resistance.”

May we all win…by losing!