Walking Pains

The local chapter of the Multiple Sclerosis Society asked me to speak this week on the spiritual and psychological impact of chronic pain to both sufferers and their families. I’m not interested in chronic pain at all. Perhaps because I don’t suffer from it, but mostly because I don’t understand it. I’m not now and have never been interested in things medical. That kind of stuff bores me.

I can salivate to satisfy Pavlov over a 16th century manuscript (I’ve done it), but anything that hints of stethoscopes or angiograms, even when my own health is concerned, induces in me a catatonic stupor.

But I am interested in people. I even love some of them. Over the past forty years I’ve had chronic pain and disease rob me of people I love. I’ve watched bodies slowly deteriorate as souls inside crumble, their lives stolen. So I’ve read about chronic pain, studied textbooks and manuals and read the well-intentioned but largely unhelpful advice written by those who are supposed to be able to do something but don’t know what.

Chronic pain is neurological in its beginning, but the real havoc it wrecks is spiritual. It steals hope from the mind. It enthrones fear in the hearts of its victims. And its victims aren’t only those who suffer the physical pain of chronic illness, but in more subtle and oft-times more insidious ways, it attacks the family and friends of the sufferer with equal vehemence. I’ve seen it rob the best friend of my youth of his mother—sending her first to her bed where she lay helpless for years until it sent her on—to an early and rightly-hated grave.

So Thursday night I spoke to a group of multiple sclerosis sufferers—families and patients, victims all. I spoke about hope and courage in the face of adversity; I talked about not giving up and finding ways to squeeze what they could from life.

They want me to speak again.

I don’t know why. I’m pretty certain I didn’t say anything that they haven’t heard before—in spades, no doubt. But I’ll go back and say words to them they don’t need to hear. I’ll go, not for their sake, but for mine. Because as I talked to their group, it wasn’t they who learned, but me. On their faces was a fixed determination, made gentle by years of struggle, not to be overcome. These were people who may very well die of their diseases, but won’t be conquered by them.

I went to teach and stayed to learn. Not for the first time since God set me on my labyrinthine path.


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FROM MY BOOKSHELF this week I pulled a small but delightful volume titled Is Shakespeare Dead? Penned by Mark Twain during the last years of his life, it explores the hackneyed question of “who” actually wrote the works commonly attributed to William Shakespeare.

Twain comes down, more or less, on the Baconian side of the question, but not so as it would matter. As with so many of his literary meanderings, the ostensible topic is just an excuse for Twain to expostulate on the foibles of the “damned human race.” It’s a longish essay (my copy runs about 100 pages or so), published with some of his others: “Concerning Tobacco,” “How to Make Dates Stick,” and “Taming the Bicycle.”

Occasionally, Twain does address the question of the authorship of the Shakespearean Canon, but mostly the essay provides a cover so he can do what he does best: poke fun at the sacred and venerable cows of his America-religion, the Congress, and academia.

As with all he wrote, it’s easy and fun reading, and it becomes obvious Twain doesn’t care what you think of the topic ‘cause he doesn’t care too much either. Reading this essay (which I’ve yet to finish) is like going for a leisurely walk with a good friend; you may often disagree, but his company and wit makes that just part of the conversation. Twain’s thoughts on the passing issues of his day make for fun historical reading, but his rapier-pointed observations on the ongoing—and unchanging—nature of the human race still puncture today.

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