It is the aim of contemplative living . . .
that you learn to recognize a blessing when you see one,
and are able to respond to it with words that God has given you.
— Kathleen Norris
31 January 2011
I have been able to see my brothers a fair amount these past few weeks. One lives only thirty miles away, the other lives outside Chicago. We three have had a chance to have a meal together a time or six, more time together than we have had in a long time.
The whole business has been a gift — laughing and teasing and remembering and telling stories, even some stories with a grain of truth in them.
A name came up in one of our conversations, the name of a man the three of us had once known and loved and had not seen in a great long while.
I began to tell the other two what I knew of the heartbreaking story of what had happened to this friend years ago, the things that had taken away his art and his work, his relationships and his meaning, his hopes and his memory. I knew more of the story than my brothers knew.
The brother who knew the least of the story listened intently and with great compassion. Then he leaned back in his chair and said something I think of every day now.
‘I have got no problems,’ he said. ‘Whatever you hear me complain about, the truth is, I have got no problems.’
In the last few weeks at our house, we heard other news.
We heard that the cancer had returned to a dear friend, the cancer we all thought had been whipped, the cancer she will undoubtedly fight as hard as she can. I am reminded that the cancer returned to her husband and her young son as well.
Another friend, a young writer in her thirties, recently had a massive stroke. She is alive but she is in for a long road, a hard road to an uncertain future, a difficult road being shared with her hour by hour by two young daughters and a husband.
Just as the holidays were working up a good head of steam, news came that one of my best friends was suddenly, surprisingly no longer to be working at the place she had worked, and a place where we had done work together for the last ten years. Our Christmas was white this year, but I have a feeling her Christmas was colder somehow.
You may have been touched by many such stories of hard news lately, maybe even more of them than I have. Your own story may be as difficult if not more so. May God have mercy on all of those who live inside such stories these days.
But unless you are not answering your mail or your telephone or reading the papers or paying attention at prayer request time at your church, you can hardly avoid the hard news that comes our way. I do not suggest you stop paying attention all together because you will miss the good news as well, and there is some, thanks be.
But I do suggest that when you hear the bad news, you might want to join me in my new favorite mantra, the one I say when I hear about someone I love and what has befallen them —
‘I have got no problems. Whatever you hear me complain about, the truth is, I have got no problems.’
