"Stuff Happens"

The Rev. Suzanne Meyer

A reading from Healing Words, by Larry Dossey, M.D.

One of the most puzzling illnesses in history took place some 2,500 years ago when the Buddha—the Awakened One—died from food poisoning, having been fed tainted meat in what proved to be his final meal. Not a very exalted way for a Buddha to go, I thought, on first discovering this account. Somehow I'd expected a more dignified cause of death than spoiled food. Later I found that this case was by no means unique, and that many great spiritual leaders have suffered ignominious ends marked by grotesque pain and suffering. Some of the historically recent examples include:

• Saint Bernadette, who in 1858 saw a vision of the Virgin at Lourdes, where thousands of healings are claimed to have occurred. Bernadette didn't receive such a healing when she needed one. Cause of death: variously called bone cancer or disseminated tuberculosis, at age thirty-five.

• Jiddu Krishnamurti, a famous spiritual teacher whose words have inspired millions around the world. Cause of death: cancer of the pancreas.

• Suzuki Roshi, who brought Zen Buddhism from Japan to the United States and established the San Francisco Zen Center. Cause of death: cancer of the liver.

• Sri Ramana Maharishi, the most beloved saint of modern India. Cause of death: cancer of the stomach . . .

Often the sickly saints seem to accept illness as part of the natural order. The great Indian sage Sri Aurobindo one day took a wrong step, fell, and broke his knee. This perplexed the physician who attended him. "How is it that you, a mahatma, could not foresee and prevent this accident?" "I still have to carry this human body about me," Aurobindo replied, "and it is subject to ordinary human limitations and physical laws."

. . . History is clear: the health records of many of the most majestic, God-realized saints and mystics are far from ideal . . . Our task here is not to figure out in every case why God-realized people get sick and die, but simply to acknowledge that they obviously do—and to ask what this might imply when illness occurs in our own lives.

But the sickly saints and mystics are only one side of the coin. They are mirrored by what we could call the healthy reprobates—individuals who have no obvious spiritual inclinations whatsoever, but who never get sick. Almost everyone knows or has heard of such a person. They break all the rules of good health, smoke and drink with abandon, and live to be a hundred without ever falling ill.

Sickly saints and healthy sinners show us that there is no invariable, linear, one-to-one relationship between one's level of spiritual attainment and the degree of one's physical health. It is obvious that one can attain immense spiritual heights and still get very sick. (Dossey, Larry. Healing Words: The Power of Prayer and the Practice of Medicine. 1st ed. HarperSanFrancisco, 1993, 13-14)

Here ends the reading.

A decade or so ago, there was a popular little piece of bumper sticker wisdom. The message was terse, just two words: "Stuff Happens." You may remember the more scatological version of the same bumper sticker in which another four-letter word was substituted for "stuff."

Stuff happens. Kind of cynical, huh? Not to mention crude, and rude. And yet, vulgar and terse as it is, for some individuals who find themselves in the midst of illness or crisis, those two little words, "stuff happens," might just be the key that unlocks the door of hell and sets them free.

Stuff happens. Or does it? It would seem that in a world that has become increasingly litigious, with everyone trying to sue everyone else for all manner of real and imagined injuries, stuff can't just happen. Someone or something must always be to blame. If we have a victim, we must have an offender or at least a responsible party. Stuff shouldn't just happen in a world where people hate unfairness and expect, no, demand that the whole universe operate like a well-oiled machine with an obvious relationship between every cause and effect. We demand answers. If something happens, there must be someone or something around to blame—it seems only fair. We hate unfairness!

In a peculiar way, I have come to think of that rude little bumper sticker as a kind of faith statement, a mantra of sorts. It says, in essence, that we are not always in control of what happens to us. Life is full of calculated risks. Mistakes are made. Accidents happen. People get sick. People even die. It happens to saints as well as sinners—to Buddhas as well as to bums.

However, there seems to be something in human nature that resists the idea that we live in a world in which random, tragic events can and do occur. Rather than accept the idea that maybe stuff just happens and go on living in a world in which there is uncertainty and unpredictability, there are those who'd rather believe that all events are the result of a kind of cosmic cause and effect. For these individuals, religion serves as a way of interpreting such events as having an inherent cause or meaning.

In other words, God doesn't allow stuff to just happen. There must always be an inherent reason. A lesson to be learned. A purpose that must be served or a punishment that must be exacted. And when stuff happens, our task as a people of faith, is to try to figure out that meaning, that purpose, that lesson. God must have a reason, and the job of religion is to figure out that grand scheme and reveal that reason to us. More on that later.

There is another terse little phrase that goes back a hundred years or more, long before there were car bumpers or stickers to stick on them: "There are no atheists in foxholes." Now, while I disagree completely with that phrase because I suspect that many, many more soldiers have lost their Sunday-school religion in a foxhole than those who have found their faith under the identical circumstances, the phrase, "There are no atheists in foxholes," reveals a popular assumption. When we are figuratively "under fire," that is to say, faced with a personal crisis, a great many of us will naturally turn to religion, turn to God for answers.

There is some truth to this. A great many men and women who go church shopping or return to church after a long absence are seeking support, solace, new relationships and even answers following a life crisis. They may not know what it is that they are seeking, but they come looking for answers, or explanations. Why me? What did I do to deserve this? Why am I being punished? Often times these wounded seekers arrive bearing a heavy burden of shame, guilt, regret, and remorse.

And while a personal crisis may not cause you to "get religion" or even to seek out answers in church, you can bet that it will cause you to be on the receiving end of much unsolicited free religious or spiritual advice. Your grandmother, your boss, your best friend, your neighbor, casual acquaintances as well as total strangers: all will be ready, willing, and able to interpret the meaning and cause of your personal crisis in terms of their own religious, or spiritual orientation. Whether you are seeking them or not, you will be inundated with religious answers.

The classic example of the individual in crisis surrounded by well-meaning, but inept advice-givers is, of course, that ancient Hebrew allegory found in the Book of Job. At the beginning of the story, we are told that Job is a good man, a generous, moral, faithful man for whom life has been very good. Job has money, family, property, and health. In the course of the story, Job loses everything: his children, his money, his property and finally his good health. In the midst of his misery, three friends come along and add to Job's pain by attempting to interpret for him the meaning of his suffering.

The first friend comes to Job and says, "And here I thought you were a righteous man. You sure had me fooled. But obviously you didn't fool God, who has finally called you to task for your evil deeds." Job tried to protest, but his friend went on, "You must have done something wrong. God doesn't make mistakes. The righteous are always rewarded and the sinners are always punished. That is the way the world works. It's the law of cosmic justice. Everybody reaps as they sew. Everybody gets exactly what they deserve."

The second friend comes along, also full of advice: "Job, my man, everybody knows that suffering builds character and makes you a better human being. You ought to give thanks to God for the chance he has given you to become a fine person. Don't think of this as suffering, think of it as an opportunity for personal growth and self-actualization. Pay attention to this little life lesson, learn from it and you'll be a better man for it in the end, trust me."

Says the third friend of Job, "Nothing happens in this old world by chance. There is a divine reason for everything. This is, too, all part of a great cosmic scheme. You may not understand the purpose behind it just yet, but you just have to trust the fact that all this was meant to be. There is no such thing as tragedy, only ignorance of the divine plan. Things will all work out for the best, you'll see. You'll look back on this little episode in your life one day and say that it was all for the best in the end."

All three of Job's friends have at least one thing in common: a belief that stuff doesn't just happen. If you are in the midst of a crisis, you must be guilty of something, or you must have failed to learn a cosmic lesson in life. Your crisis is thus intended to be remedial character education; or your crisis is not really a crisis at all, but rather part of a some bigger picture that you are not smart enough to appreciate.

In the past, orthodox religion seemed more intent on defending the righteousness of God, or at least defending the integrity of the religious institution, over and against the needs of the suffering individual. The objective of this kind of thinking was not to comfort the sufferer, but to get God or the church off the hook.

The cliché that there are no atheists in foxholes not withstanding, many individuals have rejected orthodox religion and quit going to church exactly because of these kinds of teachings. However, in place of orthodoxy, some of these seekers have embraced varieties of so-called New Age spiritualities. But some types of New Age thought can be just as shaming and blaming as the old-time religions when it comes to making sense out of personal tragedy.

You can add to the advice of Job's comforters this piece of so-called New Age Wisdom: You are in complete control of all aspects of your destiny. Whatever happens to you, whether it is good or bad, happens because you consciously or unconsciously willed it into being. Going far beyond the simple "power of positive thinking" philosophy, this kind of absolutist belief in mind over matter tries to convince us that all aspects of our lives are within our conscious control. We choose success or failure; we choose disease or health; we choose what we deserve; and we deserve what we choose. Nothing just happens to us except what we will for ourselves. Old-time religion or New Age spirituality, the answers seem to be much the same. Stuff does not just happen. A crisis is our karma: somehow, we bring it on ourselves. We get what we deserve.

What is the real result of this kind of spiritual advice? Does it really bring comfort? Does it enable those who suffer to find healing and hope? Rabbi Harold Kushner writes:

"One of the worst things that happens to a person who has been hurt by life is that he tends to compound the damage by hurting himself a second time. Not only is he the victim of rejection, bereavement, injury, or bad luck; he often feels the need to see himself as a bad person who had this coming to him, and because of that drives away people who try to come close to him and help him. Too often, in our pain and confusion, we instinctively do the wrong thing. We don't feel we deserve to be helped, so we let guilt, anger, jealousy, and self-imposed loneliness make a bad situation even worse." (Kushner, Harold. When Bad Things Happen To Good People. Schocken, 1981, 87)

In other words, regardless of its source, much of what passes for religious or spiritual advice merely blames the victim and further isolates him or her.

Larry Dossey, a physician who is a respected internist, is one of the leading advocates of a more holistic, integrative approach to medicine. Although his medical training was quite conventional, Dossey is completely comfortable speaking and writing about the uses of prayer and guided imagery in healing. He has studied the works of shamans and native healers and is impressed with their understanding of the connection between the body, the mind, and the spirit. Dossey's work mirrors the work of men like Drs. Bernie Siegel and Deepak Chopra. Dossey also rejects the kind of spiritual advice proffered by Job's comforters. Dossey writes:

"Many people who believe in an invariable relationship between physical health and spiritual attainment accept the concept of "the Divine within," the belief in the element or quality of the Supreme Being dwelling inside every human. But even though the Divine may be present in everyone, it is obvious that human beings are imperfect reflectors, as it were, of Divine Light . . . Physical bodies are obstreperous, stubborn entities that are given to some very bad habits, such as their susceptibility to genetic diseases, proneness to infection, and so on. Bodies have "minds of their own," which do not always accurately represent our psychological and spiritual understanding. Our bodies can act up, break down, and get sick without even consulting us. Failure to recognize the relative intractability of the flesh is one of the excesses of today's consciousness-and-health movement, and is the potential cause of immense guilt when things go wrong. . . .

"Our understanding of the relationship between spirituality and healing is vastly incomplete. We should admit the obvious: There is a great mystery here. By "mystery" I do not mean temporary ignorance that will later be swept away by additional information, or questions that will someday be resolved by future research. I mean mystery in the strongest possible sense—something unknowable, something essentially beyond human understanding. The fact that saints sometimes suffer and sinners don't is but one expression of this mystery. . . .

"Mystery irritates; it demands solutions. Perhaps this is because we are so intolerant of ambiguity, generally preferring things in black or white without shades of gray . . . anything to preserve the preferred theory that good people, spiritual people, righteous people don't get sick." (Healing Words, 15-18)

I agree with Larry Dossey. There is much we know about the relationship between body, mind and spirit. It is true that many physical illnesses are psychogenic in origin, and even those that are not have been shown to benefit from psychotherapy, meditation, hypnosis, and even prayer.

But I am also convinced that in many cases stuff just happens. As the Bible says, the rain falls on the just and unjust alike. Illness, accident and misfortune can strike anyone. Whether you are a saint or a sinner, no one is exempt. Whether you go to church every Sunday or never darken the door of any religious institution, bad things happen. I understand that the role of my religion is not to discern the meaning of events, or to assign blame or to propitiate the powers that be. Rather my faith serves to effect healing in the lives of those touched by tragedy by restoring them to community. My faith does so by addressing the guilt, shame, and isolation that often accompanies illness and injury.

Stuff happens. It just does. Sometimes there is no reason good or bad. I take that on faith. So, am I saying that your suffering is meaningless? Your pain, your loss, your chronic illness has no meaning, no larger purpose, no value? Things just happen and potentially render all of our lives, and our work, and our plans meaningless? And all we can do about it is surrender and accept "the mystery of it all"? Am I trying to tell you, "Life is just a crapshoot, and nothing we can say or do will ever change that"? No, that's not what I am saying. Don't confuse meaning with cause. To paraphrase Rabbi Kushner:

"The bad things that happen to us in our lives do not have a meaning when they happen to us. They do not happen for any good reason which would cause us to accept them willingly. But we can give them a meaning. We can redeem these tragedies from senselessness by imposing meaning on them. The question we should be asking is not, 'Why did this happen to me? What did I do to deserve this? Why is God punishing me?" A better question would be, "Now that this has happened to me, what am I going to do about it? What meaning am I willing to give it? What purpose will I let it serve? How will I choose to redeem this tragedy?'" (When Bad Things Happen to Good People, adapted).

Referring to the writings of the German theologian, Dorothee Soelle, Kushner adds, "If suffering and death bring us to explore the limits of our capacity for strength, love and cheerfulness, if [they lead] us to discover sources of consolation we never knew before, then what has happened to us is not without meaning, even though it may be without cause" (When Bad Things Happen to Good People, adapted).

Whether we be saints or sinners, every one of us will confront tragic circumstances; every one of us will at one time or another ask the questions, "Why this? Why me?" And every one of us will face a whole slew of Job's comforters ready, willing, and able to provide us with reasons why this crisis is either divine punishment or a cosmic lesson we failed to learn, or a fate we have unconsciously chosen for ourselves.

But I believe that there is a level of faith or spirituality that goes much deeper than simplistic explanations, it is that level of faith which gives courage to those who survive a tragedy and live to create meaning from it. It is that level of faith experienced by those who come to know a kind of healing in their lives, even though they may not be cured of what ails them. It is that deeper level of faith that acknowledges that the universe is flawed and unpredictable and accepts this truth without blame or shame, without guilt or bitterness, rage or regret. It is the kind of faith that forgives the world for being imperfect. It is the kind of faith not bent on defending this or that image of God, or the teachings of this or that religious institution. It is the kind of faith that can enable each one of us to find transcendent meaning in something as mundane as a bumper sticker. Stuff happens. That's a given. What meaning will we choose to give it? What purpose will we let it serve? That's our call.

Amen.