Night

One of my favorite times of the day are meal times at either one of the two communal cafeterias that are part of the Graduate Theological Union. Not only is it an opportunity to avail oneself to food, it is an opportunity for conversation and fellowship. Not surprisingly as everyone on this “Holy Hill” is a seminarian of one faith or another, the topic of conversation is often religious belief. And many times, people speak of their personal relationship to a God that moves through their lives as a constant living presence.

I read Elie Wiesel’s “Night,” this morning, one of my required readings for the week. It is, according to the book jacket, a “terrifying account of the Nazi death camp horror that turns a young Jewish boy into an agonized witness of the death of his family.”

Despite the heavy subject, it is a quick read. And for those familiar with “Schindler’s List,” there wasn’t much in it that we don’t already know - imprisonment, starvation, forced work, selection, gas chambers, the death of five million people.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that humans have the ability to act as both divine and evil creatures. But I find that to be a frightful concept of balance.

In a May fellowship service, I had crafted what I might now call my theology of suffering with the words: “We cannot know the reasons why there is a certain pain in the world. We can only know that that pain has the ability to strengthen our love. This does not dismiss our anger and the tactile misery of our feelings. But if we can find love in our pain, we are indeed evolving.”

Today, I’m not sure it is so simple.