Download - The Perfect Wisdom Web

Be Not Afraid sufferinginexperienced swimmer off his feet and keep tossinghim back onto the shore, so also was I painfully tossedback on dry land by the blows of misfortune. And it wasonly because of this that I was able to travel the pathwhich I had always really wanted to travel.It was granted to me to carry away from my prisonyears on my bent back, which nearly broke beneathits load, this essential experience: how a human beingbecomes evil and how good. In the intoxication ofyouthful successes I had felt myself to be infallible, andI was therefore cruel. In the surfeit of power I was amurderer and an oppressor. In my most evil momentsI was convinced that I was doing good, and I was wellsupplied with systematic arguments. It was only whenI lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed withinmyself the first stirrings of good.What does suffering mean for someone who is notgranted such a recognition – or who could not accept it,even if he were? Chuck, a fellow pastor, says that for hisfamily and circle of friends, the method of choice wasgritting one’s teeth and pretending it didn’t matter:I grew up in a typical middle-class home, where thesubject of death – like illness, grief, heartache, or othersources of anxiety – was assiduously avoided. It’s not11