Life in the Shadowlands
Lecture for the Society of Christian Teachers, 2002
By W. Sumner Davis, BA, MS, M.Div, Dr. Theol.
This past September 11th, marked the anniversary of the hijacking, death and devastation by a group of people bent on causing as much suffering as possible. It may be easy, but we cannot rationally blame these events on any religion, culture, or race, but by a select few people who were so filled with hatred that they became consumed by it.
The attacks and the resulting suffering they caused and continue to raise many questions about who we are as a nation. Are we really the melting pot envisioned by our founders? Have we really become one society-or are we still set by rifts and eddy of injustice and hyphenated America? Perhaps we are best envisioned as segmented groups who just happen to live on the same soil. One of the men I have come to respect greatly, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., once spoke the words that have given many of us the hope that perhaps someday all people will be judged, in his words; not by the color of their skin; but by the depth of their character. Dr. King had faith in God, regardless of the injustices he witnessed. I have faith- but must admit that it is sometimes hard to find.
It seems that on that September 11th we were jarred from our complacency. Perhaps we were too comfortable? Have lost some freedom, or is it perhaps that we now understand much of our freedom was merely an illusion? If so, it is an illusion we can no longer afford. Many, myself included, had always envisioned a wonderful society based on personal freedoms. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; these were our guarantees once. No longer. It seems we have awakened to a dangerous world- where religious zealots, nit merely content to live and let live have decided for the rest of us what we should, what we must believe. A great many faithful, good and decent people have asked these same or similar questions that have stumped the learned clergy for eons. When these tragedies strike- these heartless thoughtless atrocities, Where was God?
Where was God on September 11th, 2002? Isn't God supposed to watch out for us? Isn't God supposed to love us? Did God really abandon us on that September day? Maybe it goes deeper than this. We might ask if God even cares about our suffering. Should God care? Is the love of a God different from the love of a mortal? We all have loved in our lives-romantic love, brotherly love, and love for our friends. And we all know, we can feel it to our very souls that when we love someone we cannot bear to see them suffer-we will do anything to ease it-even taking that suffering and pain upon ourselves if we could. We get down of our knees and pray until there is nothing left. If we feel that way, why doesn't God?
As the smoke and flames billowed from the attacks on September 11, we found time for each other. As we watched these images unfold on our televisions, we could not but help to place ourselves at the scene, at least emotionally. There are times when we feel a special affinity to our fellow man. We realize we are all brothers and sisters- regardless of color or creed or belief. But all too soon things return to normal-whatever normal is. We push and we shove. We are short with people; we are rude and have little time to waste on the ordinary person. We are not the first to have adopted such an “above it all” way of living. Let me tell you a very short story of a great writer, but a man like any other who chose to live above pain and suffering-and made his living writing books and giving lectures about the very topics he knew the least about. His name was Clive Staples Lewis, but everyone called him Jack.
Many would say his best, or at least his truest work was done after he experienced true suffering for the first time. Jack Lewis, the Oxford don and gifted writer had spent his life as a comfortable, happy bachelor, surrounded by his books and his intellectual friends. He was such an inspirational speaker that he was asked by the BBC to give a series of lectures in the 1940's; he wrote many books, for both children and adults. Many of you may be familiar with his Narnia Chronicles. It seems that for all his second hand knowledge on pain and suffering, he was never faced ultimate suffering. Lewis once said to an audience of listeners that "It is suffering that drives us out into the world of others." Yet he remained walled off from the world with few exceptions. A self imposed, albeit comfortable seclusion beyond the reach of any emotional pain or suffering. And then the worst thing for a person like Lewis happened. He fell in love. An American divorcee named Helen Joy Gresham had been writing to Lewis and had gone to Oxford to meet this great man. As we all know, great emotional pain and suffering can only affect us if we love someone else, regardless of how we might describe that love. After falling in love Lewis began to fully understand complete happiness and joy, and in the end, absolute sorrow.
Lewis once spoke about what he called "the gift of suffering." Now he considered it "the curse of the damned." Lewis who had once said that the faithful could find meaning in suffering could himself, find none. “Not only meaning, but great strength can be found in pain” Lewis had said. But it was his wife's untimely death after years of incredible pain and suffering that would take Lewis by complete surprise. Left alone with his own thoughts, he was not as sure as he had been.
Lewis, like most of us, could find no meaning in suffering and pain. He was so distraught that he referred to humanity as "rats in a cosmic laboratory"-he had no doubt that the operation was for our ultimate good, but that still made God the vivisectionist. For a good, honest and decent person to suffer an incurable cancer at such a young age must feel very unfair. How on earth could a person feel close to God if God had chosen to let such a thing happen? Where was the purpose? Where was the meaning? One of Lewis friends, an Anglican Priest tried in vain to comfort him by telling him that despite all this, "life must go on." Lewis responded that he did not know if it must go on, but it certainly does.
On September 11th, was there any purpose in the suffering and pain? If there was-it is beyond my capacity to see it. And yet more than one year latter, life goes on. Yet the aftermath leaves us with a choice-one we each have to make for ourselves: where do we go from here. Or perhaps where do we WISH to go from here? Do we mire ourselves in the past---or do we move forward. Lewis once wrote in one of his stories that we live in the “Shadowlands”-the sun is always shining brighter somewhere else; around the bend in the road, over the brow of the hill." I believe we have the ability to step forward into that bright sun light, or, to wade back into the safety of the shadows. Lewis chose to suffer, he chose to venture into the light. Not to avoid pain and suffering-but so as to see it better, and perhaps to understand just a bit of it. Pain and suffering is a part of life. Often times there simply are no reasons- it just is. But that’s part of the deal. Light needs darkness, and happiness needs suffering. Not to undo it, but to reflect it; to define it. Pain makes life more real, more genuine. It is part of life.
By W. Sumner Davis, BA, MS, M.Div, Dr. Theol.
This past September 11th, marked the anniversary of the hijacking, death and devastation by a group of people bent on causing as much suffering as possible. It may be easy, but we cannot rationally blame these events on any religion, culture, or race, but by a select few people who were so filled with hatred that they became consumed by it.
The attacks and the resulting suffering they caused and continue to raise many questions about who we are as a nation. Are we really the melting pot envisioned by our founders? Have we really become one society-or are we still set by rifts and eddy of injustice and hyphenated America? Perhaps we are best envisioned as segmented groups who just happen to live on the same soil. One of the men I have come to respect greatly, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., once spoke the words that have given many of us the hope that perhaps someday all people will be judged, in his words; not by the color of their skin; but by the depth of their character. Dr. King had faith in God, regardless of the injustices he witnessed. I have faith- but must admit that it is sometimes hard to find.
It seems that on that September 11th we were jarred from our complacency. Perhaps we were too comfortable? Have lost some freedom, or is it perhaps that we now understand much of our freedom was merely an illusion? If so, it is an illusion we can no longer afford. Many, myself included, had always envisioned a wonderful society based on personal freedoms. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; these were our guarantees once. No longer. It seems we have awakened to a dangerous world- where religious zealots, nit merely content to live and let live have decided for the rest of us what we should, what we must believe. A great many faithful, good and decent people have asked these same or similar questions that have stumped the learned clergy for eons. When these tragedies strike- these heartless thoughtless atrocities, Where was God?
Where was God on September 11th, 2002? Isn't God supposed to watch out for us? Isn't God supposed to love us? Did God really abandon us on that September day? Maybe it goes deeper than this. We might ask if God even cares about our suffering. Should God care? Is the love of a God different from the love of a mortal? We all have loved in our lives-romantic love, brotherly love, and love for our friends. And we all know, we can feel it to our very souls that when we love someone we cannot bear to see them suffer-we will do anything to ease it-even taking that suffering and pain upon ourselves if we could. We get down of our knees and pray until there is nothing left. If we feel that way, why doesn't God?
As the smoke and flames billowed from the attacks on September 11, we found time for each other. As we watched these images unfold on our televisions, we could not but help to place ourselves at the scene, at least emotionally. There are times when we feel a special affinity to our fellow man. We realize we are all brothers and sisters- regardless of color or creed or belief. But all too soon things return to normal-whatever normal is. We push and we shove. We are short with people; we are rude and have little time to waste on the ordinary person. We are not the first to have adopted such an “above it all” way of living. Let me tell you a very short story of a great writer, but a man like any other who chose to live above pain and suffering-and made his living writing books and giving lectures about the very topics he knew the least about. His name was Clive Staples Lewis, but everyone called him Jack.
Many would say his best, or at least his truest work was done after he experienced true suffering for the first time. Jack Lewis, the Oxford don and gifted writer had spent his life as a comfortable, happy bachelor, surrounded by his books and his intellectual friends. He was such an inspirational speaker that he was asked by the BBC to give a series of lectures in the 1940's; he wrote many books, for both children and adults. Many of you may be familiar with his Narnia Chronicles. It seems that for all his second hand knowledge on pain and suffering, he was never faced ultimate suffering. Lewis once said to an audience of listeners that "It is suffering that drives us out into the world of others." Yet he remained walled off from the world with few exceptions. A self imposed, albeit comfortable seclusion beyond the reach of any emotional pain or suffering. And then the worst thing for a person like Lewis happened. He fell in love. An American divorcee named Helen Joy Gresham had been writing to Lewis and had gone to Oxford to meet this great man. As we all know, great emotional pain and suffering can only affect us if we love someone else, regardless of how we might describe that love. After falling in love Lewis began to fully understand complete happiness and joy, and in the end, absolute sorrow.
Lewis once spoke about what he called "the gift of suffering." Now he considered it "the curse of the damned." Lewis who had once said that the faithful could find meaning in suffering could himself, find none. “Not only meaning, but great strength can be found in pain” Lewis had said. But it was his wife's untimely death after years of incredible pain and suffering that would take Lewis by complete surprise. Left alone with his own thoughts, he was not as sure as he had been.
Lewis, like most of us, could find no meaning in suffering and pain. He was so distraught that he referred to humanity as "rats in a cosmic laboratory"-he had no doubt that the operation was for our ultimate good, but that still made God the vivisectionist. For a good, honest and decent person to suffer an incurable cancer at such a young age must feel very unfair. How on earth could a person feel close to God if God had chosen to let such a thing happen? Where was the purpose? Where was the meaning? One of Lewis friends, an Anglican Priest tried in vain to comfort him by telling him that despite all this, "life must go on." Lewis responded that he did not know if it must go on, but it certainly does.
On September 11th, was there any purpose in the suffering and pain? If there was-it is beyond my capacity to see it. And yet more than one year latter, life goes on. Yet the aftermath leaves us with a choice-one we each have to make for ourselves: where do we go from here. Or perhaps where do we WISH to go from here? Do we mire ourselves in the past---or do we move forward. Lewis once wrote in one of his stories that we live in the “Shadowlands”-the sun is always shining brighter somewhere else; around the bend in the road, over the brow of the hill." I believe we have the ability to step forward into that bright sun light, or, to wade back into the safety of the shadows. Lewis chose to suffer, he chose to venture into the light. Not to avoid pain and suffering-but so as to see it better, and perhaps to understand just a bit of it. Pain and suffering is a part of life. Often times there simply are no reasons- it just is. But that’s part of the deal. Light needs darkness, and happiness needs suffering. Not to undo it, but to reflect it; to define it. Pain makes life more real, more genuine. It is part of life.
posted by Dr. W. Sumner Davis at 8:13 AM
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