PainOnline.com

Frightening, isn’t it? Is this the company we wish to keep?

This piece will make sense only if you watch the movie, Amadeus, before reading it.
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“…thou has filled me with indignation. Why is my pain perpetual, and my wound incurable, which refuseth to be healed…. –Jeremiah 16:17-18

“Tender heartedness generally only comes from tribulation”–James Rosenvall

“A new heart will I give you…I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a new heart of flesh.”– Ezek 36:26

“Resources for coping with central pain are best found in stories of the castaway on a desert island, an inmate in some Gulag, or in the recounting of the horrors of a brutal concentration camp. The protagonists are in one way or another powerfully alone. Their recountings are about survival under circumstances where death pays close attention and a misstep can be fatal. The inventions allowing survival require superhuman focus on extremely simple and basic ideas, and using things of no apparent utility to serve a purpose. Resort to unthinkable morsels provides barely sufficient nutrition. This is exactly what is required to survive the ravages and isolation of central pain. Desperate survival always sounds very close to insanity. The trick is to gather the incidents of desolation, loneliness, heartbreak, fear, and intense suffering into a story of adventure.”–Kenneth McHenry

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We were all destined for better things, those of us with cord injury. There was clear effort, a valiant struggle, with some mistakes of course. In the whole, however, we were at least decent, perhaps even commendable. We had an understanding. We would more or less obey, and in turn, we expected a great deal. To put it another way, we wanted a good deal, a very good deal indeed. We wanted heaven for mortal effort. The deal of eternity you might call it.

It is presumptious for a human, any human, to expect eternal life. Yet, we are instructed, even commanded to hope and live for it. Not infrequently, we commit the even greater presumption to assume we actually deserve it. By any liberal measure of justice whatsoever, we all fall far short. Yet, we gave ourselves passing grades on most points, as humans are wont to do. We know our struggles and minimize errors because we tire of the uphill climb or because the information governing choices is misleading at times.

We give ourselves wide allowance for the unexpected, or when in retrospect we would have acted differently, (had we only known). We shrink the elephants of wrong and explode the mice of right. We may have been indifferent to the suffering or starvation of innocent millions, but we did, after all, decide to watch less TV and be nice to our friends. Even if we hated ourselves, or large portions thereof, we felt special, in some unknowable way.

Then, when we least expected it, the curtain came down. Those assumptions about what we did and what we refused to do.–the pleasures we passed up, along with the pleasures we indulged. In our own tally, whatever we were doing, it was good enough to merit protection from spinal cord loss. No matter how flawed, no matter how weak, no matter how forgetful, there was this implicit deal we assumed had been made and sealed. It was a deal that had on the other end, the fact that WE would not become one of those unthinkable people whose spinal cords no longer functioned.

When the night of darkness came, it was obvious that someone was cheating. Just look at all the lesser folk who were walking around perfectly fine. We had struggled for an education, for family, for purpose. And suddenly, we were completely lost. Worthless, perhaps, in the world’s terms. Just a freaking minute here. What is going on? We didn’t deserve this and couldn’t have planned for it. It was a nightmare in which we most certainly did not belong. Who put us there? Looking around, we dared not speak the name of the apparent culprit. We weren’t that low.

Then, as some recovery came, and the symbols of rectitude (mothers, aunts, innocent children, and other noteworthy exceptions to the apparent weaknesses of mankind) who stood by our beds gave thanks for the small movements, and led us to believe we were special after all, (despite significant evidence to the contrary at various junctures). There were perhaps those who assured us that God had arranged the drama which would surely soon lead to recovery, that all the hard work would not be overlooked. But infiltrating into the hope, a monster came in and claimed us. It was Central Pain. It should have taken the thief, the prostitute, the murderer, the deceiver whose life was forfeit to the pain horror, but no. It was there for us.

“What was God up to?” (Peter Shaffer’s “Amadeus”) A terrible odyssey was ahead and continues still, carving out a willingness to submit, and a little of the child’s meekness, alternating with a near fatal sadness which we struggle to suppress. Eventually, iron enters our souls, and by habit the unendurable burning is endured. Somewhere there is a love for all of God’s children who suffer, suffused with questions about how the whole thing makes sense, at any level. That which hardly raises an eyebrow to our fellows is the most profound mystery imaginable to ourselves. We are softened enough. Any more and we would melt like butter. When will the cure come?

Since when was submission an element of spirituality? Goodness was doing something. It was necessary to start over from square one in our definition of a proper life. All our lives our attitude had been to “rage, rage against the dying of light” (Dylan Thomas). What were we supposed to do now that the light had gone out?

In the movie, Amadeus, Salieri is the emperor’s composer. From childhood, he has dedicated his life to letting God speak through him in the form of music. Promises were made. Bargains were struck, one sided of course. Salieri would dedicate his chastity, his life, his everything to God if the Divine would only inspire him to bring forth music.

Things were going swimmingly, and then, Salieri encountered Mozart. The young composer was so superior that Salieri was astonished and not a little jealous. Looking at uncorrected manuscripts brought to him by Mozart’s wife, who was seeking a position for her husband, Salieri saw such genius and astonishing gifts that he was overcome. The music came from Mozart’s head already finished. At this point, Salieri recognizes God in Mozart’s music, and realizes (concludes, actually) that God has passed him over in favor of a “giggling dirty-minded” man, who just happens to be Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Why God has passed him over is incomprehensible. To Mozart God has given the incredible creativity in an almost effortless expression and ease of delivery, it seems.

Salieri feels cheated. He prays that some of the same inspiration might come to himself. He prays for just one line of the divine music, so that he might know that God is real. When it does not come, and Mozart’s star shines so brightly that Salieri is blinded, a hatred grows, and a transformation of the reserved, devout Salieri takes place. He stares at a religious symbol and with a defiant voice declares to the image, “From now on, you and I are enemies”.

An enemy to God! This is a frightening thing. Can one actually become an enemy to God. Who would they then be in league with? The problem is that Salieri lives in every one of us. There is a part of all of us which is half-mad, a kind of creature. We are all enemies to God, in one aspect of our being. This website is full of the expression of agony which is designed to give a release, to give voice to the feelings which are inevitable when one is cheated of all pleasure, when the skin itself becomes an engine of pain. To be still and immobile, we might possibly have accepted, but to be in agony was too much. Without time to think, we suddenly formed in our hearts, like Salieri, an emotion which spoke the words. God had become our enemy, and perhaps we had become his.

This was just a thought, however; just a feeling. Every man wars against God. The flesh itself generally seeks the opposite of what we have been taught will promote the influence of the spirit. Man has a dual nature. We did not really become the enemy of God when we developed central pain. Nor did God become our enemy. We had been in this position before, when one voice advised us to lie, to harm another, to be untrue to our own principles; while another voice advised us to hold steady. Sometimes we went one way, and sometimes another.

For all the surety of others that central pain is a theological condition, we must resist this kind of thinking ourselves. It is not a theological illness. It is a physical illness, to which we are susceptible by nature of having bodies. Frankly, having it does NOT make us an enemy to God. It simply makes us realize that we didn’t have the deal we thought we had. Salieri could not compose music like Mozart despite his prayers. We cannot eliminate the burning pain by making deals. There is no DEAL to be made in the solution of central pain.

The steps to be taken to solve central pain are scientific. Just as Mozart worked hard from childhood to acquire his art and was performing for royalty while Salieri frolicked in the playground, solutions are not bargains at all. They are the result of hard work. We live in a time when amazing scientific skills are possessed by some. One of these great scientists, through hard work, will be a Mozart of pain chemistry. Using the skills God gave him/her our terrible state will be remedied.

The cure will not make us a friend to God, just as the condition does not make us his enemy. It is well to remember Salieri’s bitterness, for it led him to seek Mozart’s destruction. In the end, Salieri’s guilt at having driven Mozart to an early grave overwhelmed him. Salieri sought to take his own life. The idea that we have become an enemy to God can lead to no good. Let us instead think of ourselves as his children. Let us realize children seek to make deals which may be impracticable in the overall scheme of things. We must endure well, and suffer whatever God allows to come upon us. That is the deal. And the reward? If they don’t cure central pain here, God will certainly have no such condition in his domain.

Even the devil will suffer only spiritual agony. God is not an inflicter of eternal physical pain. However, our taste of it convinces us that the emotional/spiritual variety would have nothing to recommend it either. If we have bitter feelings, let us move ourselves back into the realm of humans generally, weak, subject to all manner of illness, and aware that losing one of God’s gifts for a time may help us appreciate what we have all the more, in the time of restoration.

Is this a religious statement? Not really. It is more in the line of a confession. Salieri frightens us, because he IS us. We hope to be able to endure central pain, but like most deals, if we do, the endurance will probably be due more to the merits of what was placed in us, rather than our inestimably good judgment and chosing.

Come to think of it, all illness is solved because someone in some prior time showed such matters to be pitiable. We bypass smallpox, gangrene, the plague, and other such manner of suffering because someone, somewhere demonstrated that there was work to be done. We are demonstrating that right now. Let us realize that although it is a thankless task, it is not without purpose to the Divine. We are not enemies to God, and he is not ours, except as all humans must keep the creature in bounds. When the creature howls revenge, let us soften the heart, and realize that in the end, the deal will be pretty good.