The Importance of Pain

From Father Richard Rohr's daily meditations- he says things so well. He went through each of Alcoholics Anonymous' 12 Steps and related them to our walk of faith. This is today's entry.

BREATHING UNDER WATER: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps Only people who have suffered in some way can save one another—exactly as the Twelve Step program discovered. Deep communion and dear compassion is formed much more by shared pain than by shared pleasure. Only those who have tried to breathe under water know how important breathing really is, and will never take it for granted again. They are the ones who do not take shipwreck or drowning lightly, who can name “healing” correctly, who know what they are being saved from, and who develop the patience and humility to ask the right questions of God and of themselves. You see, only the survivors know the full terror of the passage, the arms that held them through it all, and the power of the obstacles that were overcome. Those who have passed over eventually find a much bigger world of endurance, meaning, hope, self-esteem, deeper and true desire, but most especially, a bottomless pool of love both within and without.