ENDURANCE

I hate to complain about things that we cannot change.  And I try, after all these years in Maine, not to be one of the weather whiners.  But seriously, it’s hard not to whine.  After the hardest winter in recent memory, when many of us are beyond fatigue with snow removal and temperatures that try the soul, there’s only one word for what this winter’s end requires of us—endurance.  We cannot know what the next few weeks may have in store for us, but if the experience of this season is any indication, it will be worse than we expect and I, at least, will ever so slightly resent it.  I might even whine.  That said, there is still nothing to be done but to endure it.

I’ve had a recent reacquaintance with Anton Chekov’s great play, “Uncle Vanya.”  The play ends with a long monologue by Sonya, a young woman short on prospects or hopes for any life better than the grim one that she is living.  She expresses beautifully a philosophy that seems to grow naturally out of the Russian way of life (a place with even longer, harder winters than ours).   She says this: “What can we do? We shall live through the long procession of days before us, and through the long evenings; we shall patiently bear the trials that fate imposes on us; we shall work for others without rest, both now and when we are old; and then we shall die, and we shall meet it humbly, and there, beyond the grave, we shall say that we have suffered and wept, that our life was bitter, and God will have pity on us.”

In other words what Sonya says in the parlance of a modern and rather vulgar bumper sticker is, “Life sucks and then we die.”  The Buddha said something very much like this 2600 years ago (and he didn’t even have much in the way of winter weather). 

Most of us don’t feel quite this pessimistic about the future even when it snows.  But the reality is that life presents us with both joys and trials.  There are moments of great pleasure and satisfaction, but there are also times of great pain, disappointment, and most of all, long, difficult struggles.  An important part of our spiritual lives is how we deal with those difficult times and challenges.  Many of us want our faith to make things better.  We want to know that God is on our side and helping us to overcome problems.  We want to feel that faith is a comfort that eases the pains by giving us meaning or reassurance or an answer to our prayers for relief.  We want to know that our God is going to do something to make things better.

But the fact is, God doesn’t seem to remove our griefs or mitigate our trials or take away the difficult stuff.  Sometimes our lives, like our winters, just become grim and cold.  There are bad things that we cannot change and that faith cannot clear out of our path.  In those times, the real gift of faith is simple, the strength to endure.  Sometimes, the only answer is to grit your teeth and tough it out.

A few years ago, when our dear friend, Deb Mathews was first undergoing treatment for cancer, she confessed to me that she just didn’t think she had the strength to go through what they were telling her that she had to go through.  I tried to tell her that she had much, much more strength available to her than she could even yet imagine.  I was sure that she possessed untapped wells of strength and endurance that she didn’t even know about yet.  I believed this because I believe that inner strength; a rock-hard steely core of strength, is available to all of us if we ask for it.  As many of you know, Deb eventually went through years of unbelievably difficult treatments before losing her battle with cancer.  While her body eventually gave out, her spirit never did.  She never reached any limit on her resolve to fight.  She never gave up or used up the strength that was given to her.  She endured.

Lent begins this week.  It symbolically represents the 40 longs years that the Israelites spent in the wilderness and the forty long days and nights of Jesus’ fast in a different wilderness.  It also represents to us the long days and nights that all of us are sometimes called to spend in our own inner wildernesses.  It represents all the long periods of pain or grief or worry or fear that beset every one of us from time to time.  Those are times when we just have to endure; when we have to trust that God’s spirit in us is a source of strength beyond anything that we can imagine.  Whatever life throws at us, we can endure.  Whatever challenge comes our way and threatens to undo us, we can endure.  However much life sometimes hurts, we can endure.

And now, if the weather forecast calls for more snow—let it come.  If this winter plunges us into minus 20 degree nights even unto May—let it come.  I can take it.