Back in the old days around 1971, 72, or 73, I had a job at our church. My friend Mike and I were painting the old church that was upstairs in the school building. It became a gym hall and other things when they built the new church on the other side of the rectory over on another block. The old sacristy rooms and dressing rooms were in need of paint, as was the school itself, so Mike and I, between six packs, went about our business. I think Ma talked the pastor Father Felix into giving us some work to get us off the streets. It was not a very stable time for me for many reasons. Since Mike and I were deep thinkers, Father Felix  would often wander over and engage us philosophical conversations about religion and life in general. One afternoon things got particularly brisk and excited, and I went off on a dissertation about pain. After listening intently, Father Felix let loose with the statement, and I remember it word for word and I even remember the enlightened look on his face when he said it: “Well then,” he said, “pain proves the existence of God.” I don’t remember in detail what I was talking about, but it must have had a profound effect on Padre Felix. When he told us his conclusion about God and pain, Mike and I kind of stopped in our tracks, looked at each other and smiled. I can’t tell you why exactly, but it was quite a moment. I don’t know what I was thinking about, and God only knows what was on Mike’s mind.

I have been at odds with God for quite a while now, and very familiar with the reality and concept of pain for most of my life; psychological pain, physical pain, moral pain, guilt ridden pain, spiritual pain, and just about every kind of pain you can think of. I was blessed at birth with an extremely sensitive nervous system, a nervous system that feels very deeply and even gets involved to the point of empathy, when I am not feeling my own version of suffering and discomfort, on whatever level it chooses to manifest itself. The simple reality is that pain hurts, sensitivity gives way to pain, and the natural chain of events is that when something hurts, you try to get rid of or numb the pain. Our society favors the numbing or even denial state as opposed to dealing with the root cause and subsequent symptoms that show up as illness, bizarre behavior, and death. Take a pill it will go away. Have a drink it will go away. While I have had my share of physical ailments, including cancer, my pain and suffering has been mostly on a spiritual level. You can get rid of physical pain, fairly easily as a matter of fact, if you know the routine; as a matter of fact, physical pain is fairly inconsequential in the big picture. But I can tell you that spiritual pain does not go away very easily or very often, it stays with you night and day and has an anergy all its own. It has ebbs and flows like the tides of the ocean. It breaths with you and becomes a part of you. My blessing, or curse, depending how how you want to look at it, is that I am at least aware of what it is that bothers me, the source of my pain and discomfort, and I have been given the will and the time and resources to at least deal with it from time to time in art and writing and physical activity, or at least the mental resources to deal with it on a constant level, somewhere in my consciousness, during every moment of my existence. I was born and raised a Roman Catholic and loved my early years in church, as an altar boy working at the foot of the altar for the better part of eleven or twelve years. There was a serenity in those churches, old and new, during my time as an altar boy. A softness and a calm that pervaded the old religion. You might not have been able to understand the Latin words, but the meaning, the spirit, the soul of something very serene and powerful was always there in church and at Mass. The power and beauty of those six o’clock a.m. masses were something special, something deep and special was present there, a feeling that was very, very powerful. Life was simple. Church was safe; but there was and is no denying the presence of a great energy that surrounded all who attended.

Somewhere around my eighteenth birthday, the Church started to make all kinds of concessions to bring in new parishioners. Latin was banished, the old mystical hymns were replaced by new modern songs, and people started to matter more than the reason they went into church. As I look at it now, they chased God our of the tabernacle, they drove him out of church. I used to have dreams where I was staring down the Pope, John Paul II, while sitting across from him in various venues. We would stare at each other, glare at each other, but no words were ever exchanged. One Sunday, Ma and I went to church, and I became so outraged that i got up and stormed out the back east doors. I didn’t know she was following me and I slammed the door. Luckily she was not in the way. I just could not take it anymore, this new religion, this people based spectacle with off key singing and pervert child molesting priests and nuns seducing little kids and whatever else the hell was going on. Maybe Father Felix was right, maybe pain does prove the existence of God.

All I know is that if you are a human being or any living being,, pain is very real, on some level, and you cannot get out of this life without experiencing it somehow, someway. We all experience pain on different levels, at different rates, in different ways. At any rate, I don’t go to church much anymore, only because it is too painful and there is nothing there for me anymore. I knew it when it was real and sacred, yes there was a spiritual purity. I do not want to know it now, that it is shallow, soiled, barren, and cold. But pain is still here, with me. It is not as bad as it used to bel. I am not flooded with the spiritual emotion that used to engulf me and drown me. Pain has a new clarity, a reason, an identity. Maybe it is because I understand or am able to tolerate it a little better. Maybe I have had had it with me so long that I have made room inside here, gave it a place to exist, instead of always trying to fight it and get rid of it. Maybe it is just because I accept it more know, that I can understand it a little better. Let’s just say it does not hurt as much. But pain does not lie. It gives what it wants to give and does what it wants to do. It is out of our control. Too much pain will show itself as you being out of control. What is worse, there is little you can really do about it. It happens to you when it is your turn whether you want or not. The key is how you handle the gift, how you deal with it. Most of us just want it to go away, to leave us alone, like a giant toothache. At least with physical pain, you can numb the symptoms. With spiritual pain, there is not much you can do, except make room inside yourself for the pain to become part of you, then gradually over time it will begin to lighten its load, it will start to dissipate like storm clouds in front of a high pressure weather system, like the winter cold goes away gradually with the higher sun and the onset of spring. All you have to do is listen and pay attention, learn from it what you will, then let it go away at its own pace, making your spirit stronger and more receptive to the life giving forces that flow through us every day. Just be cautioned: once you accept spiritual pain, it will never leave you alone. There are too few receptacles for it to occupy, too few beings willing to accept it and all its manifestations. Be free if you know what I am talking about because there is not much you can do to avoid it. Be weak and be strong, be what you have to be, let the energy come to you and through you, and take away from it what you will.

Pain Spiritual