The Imposition of Meaning

Although I have not been a Catholic for many years, the Catholic church does have one custom that I like. When one is suffering, one "offers up" one's suffering to God as a type of sacrifice or holy work. The sad, the suffering, and the afflicted then are to be seen as holy warriors rather than as victims. Or worse, as people whom God was angry with.

When my mother first developed Rhuematoid Arthritis, in her 40's, she used to say "I better offer up this pain to the Blessed Virgin."

I was never sure what she was offering the pain up for, until after my daughter was born. She said she always offered up her pain to the Blessed Virgin, that her children should be protected. She said it must have been accepted, because I and my sister-in-law had given her three granddaughters (and later a grandson) without complications.My mother saw her disease as a holy work. A long, intricate spell that was woven through her life.

She never believed that God sent her the pain, mind you. Pain and suffering were just things that happened. A big part of her religion was always to impose meaning on her own suffering.

If there is to be meaning to suffering, it must be imposed by the person suffering. Somehow, for her, "offering up" her pain somehow made it more bearable.

When people have a close call, such as surviving a plane crash or a car wreck, they say, "God was with me."

Really? What about the other 80 people on your flight. What about the people in the other car?

Does being a cripple or dead mean that God doesn't like you?

Megadoom, over at his blog, Dust In The Wind, has an excellent essay on this subject.

Gravity works for everyone. If your car spins out on a bit of black ice, the physical forces of velocity, inertia, mass, etc. are all in play. If you don't have your seat belt on, you're a marble in a box. No matter how devout or good a person you are. Conversely, when bad stuff happens, it is never some kind of punishment. 

You can't overrule the laws of physics.

I've heard of miracle cures, but they're always the merely improbable, never the truly impossible. I've also had my share of close calls.

How does this coincide with Animism?

The Animist does not see the world as a celestial ATM, nor yet is it a place of punishment. It is a complex system that is interlocking, interdependent and dynamic. Even the chaos the Anthropocene has wreaked upon the planet is part of the whole. Even if we were to cause a mass extinction event, life on this planet would continue to trip merrily on.

Since we are (as far as we know) the only fully self aware animal on the planet, it is only ourselves who try to find meaning. 

The New Age and the popularity of positive thinking takes this so far as to say that one calls one's misfortunes to oneself. That one "chooses" these "lessons",  or that karma is coming to get you, or that you had too many negative thoughts.

A really lovely discussion and debunking of this appears in Barbara Erenreich's Brightsided.

Suffering can be reduced by finding meaning in suffering.In 21st Century, North America there is a presumptuous, and sometimes cruel, urge to try to impose meaning on other people's suffering. I'm sure that this comes partly from our Calvinist leanings. That idea that misfortune happens because God doesn't like you.

Truly, bad things happen because bad things happen. At this place and time, many people feel they should be exceptions, because for years we have been told that we *are* exceptional.

No, on the macrocosmic scale, we are just one small piece. If there is meaning, one must impose one's own within the microcosm of one's own life.