It's the Suffering, Stupid!

8th May marked 75 years since the end of World War II in Europe.  That momentous date reminded me of a connection that I have with that time through a distant relative by marriage.  He is Damien Parer, a great Australian, being remembered as a gifted and committed photographer and journalist who had a passion and true gift for recording life at the front line. 

He did not just record war.  He captured it as a theatre which featured inhumanity and great suffering for the purpose of showing how humanity can grasp such intense suffering and rise through it to a new greatness.  Extraordinarily, in the one plot, one sees and is appalled by such human cruelty and indignity, while witnessing the raising up of humanity through the simple and brave acts of human kindness and compassion being so willingly and graciously offered among the same suffering actors. 

He himself became one of the many victims of that war, being killed in battle at the front line where he lived out his passion for his work and humanity. 

So Damien Parer shared his gift of facing human suffering and showing how humanity can in such ordinary ways go through it to share its true human message.  That message is that suffering does not define humanity but rather allows hunamity to define itself in the face of it.  He did not give the answers to then world problems nor did he stop or prevent a war.  Rather he showed the prupose found in suffering.  Simply, the human spirit does not have to be brought down by war, barbarism or suffering, but can meet it and rise above it to show the true strength and value of humanity.   

Can we we look through our present, shared suffering?  Can we go beyond the doubts, the pain, the hurt, the fears?  We can and, in doing so, we share the message of the time that needs to be shared for the sake of humanity. 

Do not be overcome.  Hope is real.  Grasp life for what it really is.  Live life in its fullness.  This is what we best grasp at this time of the pandemic and at all times.  It just is that a time like this in history pushes us to greatness, makes us realize this message more poignantly, kicks us out of our apathy.  Suffering is not the end.  It is part of the means to attaining the heights of humanity, and in such ordinary ways lived out by everyday men and women.  Suffering is redemptive.