"We are tempted to try to avoid not only our own suffering but also that of our fellow human beings, the suffering of the world, which is part of our own suffering. ...The artist cannot hold back; it is impossible, because writing, or any other discipline of art, involves participation in suffering, in the ills and the occasional stabbing joys that come from being part of the human drama. We are hurt; we are lonely; and we turn to music or words, and as compensation beyond all price we are given glimpses of the world on the other side of time and space."
Suffering brings depth... affliction gives us a different perspective on life and provides a glimpse into another world, if we choose to allow it. I've been drawn to much of Beethoven's music lately. There is an artist who fully understood suffering -- Beethoven battled with painful inexplicable illness, alienation from normal relationships, a devastating loss of hearing... Yet all of that terrible suffering greatly deepened his compositions. One only needs to compare an early piano sonata (any from Opus 2, for example) with a late piano sonata (Opus 111) to hear the difference. His late piano sonatas are profound and other-worldly. The fifth movement from Beethoven's String Quartet 13 (in B-flat, Opus 130 - Cavatina: Adagio molto espressivo) is an intimate glimpse into Beethoven's personl suffering. Beethoven had been almost completely deaf for 10 years before he wrote Opus 130. He said of this particular movement: "When I think of the Cavatina, it still brings a tear to my eye." Almost 200 years later, Beethoven's composition still brings a tear to my eye - Beethoven addressed universal human suffering when he wrote Cavatina and thus provided a passage into another world.
So. All of this to challenge myself - to not hold back, to participate fully in my own and the world's suffering, to give generously of my art, musings, and heart, to care for other's pain before my own, to just live abundantly in suffering, joy, loneliness, love, heartache, pleasure, and pain.
"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort."
(2 Corinthians 1:3-7)
(2 Corinthians 1:3-7)
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