When Pain is not Pain.. I am trying to get my head around this..

So, my friend Ron is sticking to his guns. Well, the opposite of guns, actually, love, peace and gratitude. He is writing a book on the subject of how everything and everyone is perfect. I am ridiculously reducing his idea, his belief, but I will try and illustrate.

His daughter suffered a terrible injury getting kicked by or kicked off a horse. Her pain and her being pretty much incapacitated has led to her hardly being able to do her work or live her life. That is depressing and isolating. Some surgery may help in the future, but for now, things are mighty dark.

Ron is Jewish, but he is no Job. He keeps an active and abiding belief that everything is perfect and everything works out for the good. This is not some Pollyanna, take the easy way out kind of magical thinking. It is his life experience both as a doctor and as a human. (no intended contradiction there) I talked before about John Gardner's teaching that everything is a gift, but often we don't like the wrapping paper and toss aside the present without opening it.

Often in hindsight we can see the gifts. If I hadn't broken my hip when I did, I wouldn't have had the chance to go on the Camino with Ron. That kind of thing. If I hadn't lost my job, I wouldn't have written my book. If we hadn't run out of food in our village in El Salvador, we wouldn't have met the magic nun.

But the thing about Ron is he keeps the faith during the crisis, the trouble. For this reason, he can keep his equanimity during the roughest times. I am trying to learn this. I am pretty good in a disaster. I can usually go to an unnatural calm and quickly assess and act. Practicing midwifery was great training for this. Everything is perfect one minute, and the next all hell is breaking loose. But in my own world, my monkey mind, my coping with ongoing, slow, painful, stuff, I am still learning, still practicing, still going nuts, having panics, pulling myself back from the brink and recalibrating.

So, I watch Ron with admiration. The ability to keep the faith during a long crisis is very important. In the book, Pilgrim's Progress, the little guy's aim was to "Pray without Ceasing". I guess if we reduce it to its essence, this is the whole ball game.