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Kevin Anderson is a psychologist. Several years ago he struggled with chronic pain that made it difficult for him to sleep
or work. At about the same time, his father contracted a common skin disease from his dog, applied the recommended topical
medicine, and "began a yearlong descent as his liver failed from the toxic effects of the medicine that was supposed to heal
him." Kevin says that the combination of his father's strange illness and his own chronic pain "were darkness upon darkness,
an experience of powerful powerlessness." (1)
He calls this period his dark night of the soul -- a personal hurricane. A friend who played an important part in his healing
reminded him that his crisis "could be a painful transformation to a new and beautiful place." To symbolize that hope, she
gave him a refrigerator magnet of a monarch butterfly. He says, "Though I couldn't see or believe it then, the image got
through to me in a way that words could not."
The day arrived when Kevin's father told the doctors he no longer was willing to endure the five-times-daily dialysis that
kept him alive. Outside the hospital room, Kevin wept, held in the embrace of his oldest brother Bob. "How can this suffering
be?" Kevin asked. Bob's startling answer was, "It's a gift."
Something broke inside Kevin at that moment. He called it "a new awareness." He writes, "What felt to me like a singular
tragedy -- losing my father -- in fact happens millions of times daily all over the world. Those who have suffered heartbreaking
loss join the vast brotherhood and sisterhood of those who have been fired in the crucible of deep sorrow. We all get our
chance to become intimately acquainted with grief. Suffering rips us open, and into that place flows compassion -- if we
let it."
Fast forward several years to the Sunday before Labor Day, 2005. A physician friend called officials in Biloxi, Mississippi
to ask how many medical teams were there five days after the storm. "None," was the answer. Kevin's friend quickly recruited
some doctors and nurses, and when Kevin offered him some money to help support the trip, he said, "I have another idea --
come with us, we can use a psychologist." So, Kevin went along. And listening to his intuition, he packed a pocketful of
butterfly stickers he found at a crafts store.
Arriving in Biloxi, he felt "like a soldier coming to a war zone." The doctor said, "It looks like a nuclear bomb went off
down here. It looks ever worse than the tsunami." He had been there also.
Kevin felt somewhat intimidated by the enormity of it all. "Am I strong enough?" he asked himself as their plane prepared
to touch down. He decided to approach the physical destruction of Biloxi "as an outward manifestation of the devastated place
(he) had already visited in (his) own soul. Though he had never been in a disaster zone, it felt like familiar turf when
he recalled his own dark night.
Kevin talked with hundreds of people in Biloxi. Most of them talked of their faith, and spoke of how people are more important
than material things. Those who suffered the worst were "the ones for whom the storm had layered a new experience of darkness
upon a life that was already in crisis because of drug or alcohol addiction, mental illness, divorce, or the recent death
of a loved one. Kevin said, "I knew that turf too, and I remembered how the simple, compassionate presence of those willing
to stand in the darkness with me had been so important to my healing."
For the first couple of days, the butterfly stickers in his pocket just seemed trite in the face of such suffering. But eventually
he risked sharing one "with a woman who had lost her home in the storm just weeks after suffering a shattering personal tragedy."
Life seemed "so dangerous and unpredictable" to her that she doubted she could ever experience normalcy. Kevin suggested
to her that "her pre-Katrina caterpillar life would eventually transform itself into a winged life, but not without some time
spent in the confusing darkness of the chrysalis, the only place where metamorphosis occurs." Weeks later she wrote him to
let him know "she was hanging in, trying her best to be about the work of transformation."
Kevin says, "Whenever I used them, the butterfly images felt like tiny pebbles to fling at a Goliath of need, and I had no
illusions that I was going to slay anything in a few days in Biloxi. But when, a few days later, I saw people I had spent
time with and I asked them if they remembered what we had talked about, many smiled softly and said, "Yes -- the butterfly.
"My time in Biloxi helped me experience the truth of my brother's insight into the mystery of suffering. Because I had been
ripped open by death and darkness and learned that suffering can be a chrysalis that precedes the gift of transformation,
I was able to be serene and strong while being present to numerous human beings in acute hardship. As it turned out, then,
I was strong enough to transform my own dark night into a drop of compassion for the ocean of suffering in Biloxi."
+ + +
On a hill outside Jerusalem two millennia ago, a young Jewish man hung in the chrysalis of suffering -- absorbing pain and
evil and death into his deepest being -- responding only with compassion. "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what
they are doing." Hanging there so powerless, he looks a little like a tiny pebble flung at a Goliath of need. Today we stand
before the anguish of this man's painful cross. Maybe we ask, "How can this suffering be?" Somewhere in the back of our
minds we hear the words, "It's a gift."
+ + +
That day outside their father's hospital room, when Kevin asked his brother, "How can this suffering be?" and he heard Bob's
answer, "It's a gift," Kevin worked with those words, creating a poem called a nested meditation. A nested meditation takes
a phrase and sits with it until it offers another line of conclusion. Then sits with that stanza until it opens to new insight.
Later that day Kevin wrote this nested meditation:
How can this suffering be?
How can this suffering be a gift?
How can this suffering be a gift?
Rip it open.
How can this suffering be a gift?
Rip it open, and the heart floods with compassion.
+ + +
The cross of Jesus is God's simple, compassionate presence willing to stand with us in the darkness of our being. When Jesus
gave us the gift of his suffering, his own heart ripped open to flood the world in compassion. May we walk the way of the
cross, be transformed in the chrysalis of his tomb, and emerge into the butterfly life of resurrection, living in his love
and sharing his compassion which will heal the world.
(1) Quotes in this sermon are from Kevin Anderson, Katrina Meditations, published in Spirituality & Health,
Sept/Oct 2006, p. 52-57.
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