Saturday, March 3, 2012

Crucible

I had the pleasure of hearing Kathryn Stockett, the author of The Help, speak last Thursday at a fundraiser for Casa Misericordia, a domestic violence shelter here in Laredo.

Yesterday, I kept reflecting on some of the author's personal life experiences she shared. Pain and suffering will always enter our souls.  Sometimes it will be our suffering alone, but sometimes the shared suffering of others. The suffering of loss and separation, especially death.

In some, those wounds produce a work of value and grace. And in some they simply fester and breed resentment.

We may not all have a novel in us, but our suffering will produce some great work in us if we will embrace the challenges of charity, mercy, grace, and forgiveness and set aside self-pity, indifference, hatred, and prejudice.