Part 2 - the Weaver
There are many things I love about working with teenagers, but one of my favorite reasons is that they force me to answer life’s tough questions. Their pointed questions about religion, their deep desire for authenticity, and their ability to sniff out any B.S. that anyone may ever serve them forces me to be sure of my approach. Over the last several years, with the increase of social media and a more widespread knowledge of devastation, tragedy, and loss, I have been faced with more questions from them about why God allows suffering to exist. That is an interesting question for me to answer since I have experienced such deep loss and sadness in my own life. I, too, have struggled with that question and have struggled to make sense of suffering.
Is there an easy way to explain redemptive suffering to them? Teenagers (and many other people in this world) don’t simply accept the idea of redemptive suffering in that they want to know why the suffering exists in the first place. They don’t care much to hear about how it can make us holy, or the role of original sin, or even how Jesus suffered himself. At the end of the day, their question is still, “WHY?”
Remember the weaver I mentioned in my last blog post? She worked so elegantly on her giant loom with incredibly fluid movements. And, as she worked, she revealed the patience and diligence it requires to yield such a beautiful tapestry. Every thread tells a story. I remember her explaining that all handmade textiles come with their own set of unique mistakes. Warped threads, inconsistent tension spots, uneven borders, and many more little accidents can occur during the tedious process of weaving. Many times, these mistakes are not the fault of the weaver. When a mistake happens, the weaver is forced to remedy that mistake as best as she can. She cannot simply throw the piece away or start over, she must find a solution to the broken beauty.
In 1999, St. Pope John Paul II wrote a beautiful Letter to Artists. Many people have never heard of nor read this letter, but it changed my life. My friend, Father Joel Faulk, gifted a copy of that letter to me when I was in college. It transformed my then insecure journey as an artist and certainly solidified my career path both then and now. I have never properly thanked him for how that gift changed me. It was a catalyst for great healing within me at that time in my life. (Side note: Ironically enough, Father Joel and Father Patrick Broussard, both longtime friends, stood by the bedside in the Emergency Room in June celebrating the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick after I arrived broken and battered, and Father Patrick also heard my first Confession after I woke up from my first surgery. Those two have had quite the way of changing and supporting my life!) There are many profound pieces in that letter, but one of my favorites is the description of God as the ultimate Artist, the original Creator. In the context of this blog, He is the Supreme Weaver. If the Supreme Weaver exists, it is true that the Supreme Unweaver also exists. And, life – our Great Tapestry – is made up of a myriad of beautiful, marvelous, and wonderful details. But, it also comes with many little imperfections – sin, struggle, death, devastation, traumatic experiences, loss, and disappointment. The Supreme Weaver, though not the creator of those imperfections, works to make the necessary adjustments on our behalf, to heal in our favor and to mend our mistakes. We cannot possibly see all of God’s remedying actions on our behalf. It would be much easier for us to focus our eyes on the obvious mistakes in life, but maybe we should focus on what God could be doing on our behalf to fix those mistakes. Could the situation have been worse? Could God be working over-time to fix our broken beauty? Not a day goes by where I do not consider how much worse this accident could have been.
When you put His saving actions on our behalf in perspective, it seems most appropriate to be thankful for a God who traces every thread of our lives. Maybe it’s not about why He has allowed suffering to exist, but more about how He has worked to miraculously fix that suffering which is inevitable. I move forward in hope that I can communicate this message to the teenagers I work with, to give them the hope that the Master Weaver hasn’t forgotten about us in our suffering.
