Last week I wrote about how
difficult it can be to listen to the suffering of other people. I also suggested some ways we can become better at that.
Here's why this matters: bearing witness to suffering, giving a sense of being understood and
accepted, is the first - essential – step towards finding hope.
I’d like to go back a couple
of thousand years here, to get some help from the Roman poet Virgil, and his
epic poem the Aeneid which describes the travels of Aeneas after the Trojan
War.
Stay with me, this will make
sense in a minute!
In the first book of the
Aeneid, we find Aeneas as a refugee, driven
far from his home by the vicious ravages of the Trojan war. He is in Carthage,
gazing at a mural in a temple, which depicts battles of the Trojan
War and the deaths of many of his friends
and countrymen. He is moved to tears, and offers a rousing tribute to his
fallen comrades.
In the middle of this, he says: ‘sunt lacrimae rerum’.
Yes I know, your Latin is probably a
bit rusty, but don’t worry……
These three words - sunt lacrimae rerum - have been
translated as either ‘there are tears for things’, or else ‘there are tears of
things’. The first version – tears for
things - indicates the burdens we have to bear, the frailty of human existence,
the ‘shit life syndrome’ people like Darren (who you met last week) experience.
The second version – tears of things- indicates that things feel sorrow for our
suffering - that in some sense the universe feels our pain.
But of course it isn’t one or the
other. It’s both. Virgil is fully aware of the ambiguity and wishes to us to
understand both meanings at the same time.
So does the Irish poet and scholar Seamus
Heaney, who translates the phrase as ‘There
are tears at the heart of things.’
And this is its richness and power. At
that moment when I experience and express compassion for the suffering of the
person in the room with me, both senses of sunt
lacrimae rerum are simultaneously in play.
They can express pain, distress and suffering, knowing that – from me - they
find understanding, compassion and safety. Our meeting place has become,
momentarily, a sanctuary.
Sometimes bearing witness to a person’s suffering in the face of
overwhelming life experiences and difficulties, may be all that is possible, or necessary.
Listening to Darren, behind his angry ranting I hear a lost, lonely, frightened
little boy. I want to give him a huge hug and bring him home with me, but I content
myself with a friendly smile, a warm handshake, and an agreement to meet again
soon.
What’s your experience of bearing witness to suffering?
