Not bringing a story to suffering

A friend of mine in recovery found out a couple days ago that his wife has several tumors on her thyroid and in her throat and will need biopsies and surgery, at least. If the tumors are benign, she still needs surgery. If they are malignant, the prognosis is very bad indeed. 

The opening share at the men's group last night included a reading of the famous acceptance paragraph that I (coincidentally haha) posted 4 days ago:

"And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing, or situation—some fact of my life —unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing, happens in God’s world by mistake. Until I could accept my alcoholism, I could not stay sober; unless I accept life completely on life’s terms, I cannot be happy. I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and in my attitudes."

This obviously offers quite a conundrum: it absolutely seems like a fucking awful "mistake" when someone we love is facing a terrible medical situation. I have a sponsee right now who is trying to get to step 3 (Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him) and he's stuck on this kind of dissonance. What kind of God is it who would co-exist with so much suffering, torment, agony and destruction, let alone allow it, let alone maybe even be the cause of it? This is not an easy question to answer satisfactorily. Ultimately, it's a cul de sac, because, well, the fact of suffering isn't changed one bit by any honest answer. 

It's easy to pass right by. Get into some deep denial. Preach some kind of bland acceptance and an irresponsible hand waving. Or even fetishize suffering itself, or exalt it as some kind of noble and tempering fire through which we must pass to get to Heaven. Or whatever. The language in the famous AA passage above provides people with a great opportunity to respond to the suffering of others with a kind of fucking ridiculous and shallow, shit for brains suggestion of radical acceptance. 

I am with reality as much as possible-- and that acceptance is just an alignment with the facts of existence. The wording that says "Nothing absolutely nothing happens in God's world by mistake," includes within it a false duality where there is rightness versus error. It's much more helpful for me to just get with what is. It could well be that "things happen by mistake," or they don't, or whatever. What difference would it make? Isness is isness. 

Things are what they are. That's hard enough to accept, let alone this weird and unnecessary idea that everything "should be" a certain way, or is "exactly as it is supposed to be," or whatever. These, again, are judgments regarding purpose, meaning, narrative, oughtness, error, etc. Not useful, ultimately. In fact, delusional. 

The most useful thing of all is to accept exactly what is. So, for example, my friend who finds out his wife might have cancer doesn't have to wrestle with what kind of God, why suffering, crisis of faith, resentment toward a cruel universe or any of that. He has to sit with the fact that his wife might have cancer. I mean, that is the case. That is what is happening. 

So if we can get out to meet what is actually happening, at any point in our lives, we are making real progress. If we insist on a narrative of purpose or noble suffering that exalts us or any of those other judgments, we are missing the richest experience there is, which is simply to come to terms with exactly what is. Because in all that story-making about how "everything happens for a reason" or "nothing happens by mistake" we can easily find our flat out terror of simply sitting with reality. Without bringing any of our story-making, judgment, explanatory powers, projections, bargaining or whatever. If we need a programmatic God who always has a plan and if we need the infantalizing reassurance that "everything happens for a reason," we can easily create those myths out of whole cloth. But if we want to be free and have a direct experience of the present, we're going to have to put those toys away. 

The fact is: here we are. What is happening is exactly what is happening. That is where true acceptance lives. This is this. And here I am with it. There's no need to varnish this direct encounter with tall tales of purpose or redemption. In fact, for someone in the midst of acute suffering, the varnish is insulting. It suggests that a "truly spiritual" person rises above. That the anger and terror is somehow a "deficiency." In fact, getting to the moments of fearless acceptance require a passage through all of it-- through all of our humanity. 

I vow to make space for all of it without judgment. That's a reliable home for us. The rest is tale spinning.