Suffering And Silence

I never know whether there's more to Kierkegaard than meets the eye or less? He seems a sympathetic guide to concepts and issues that disquiet whatever remains of that which formed my faith. It's something -no matter if I'm a part of that large agnostic diaspora or not- that remains in my sinew and causes me no discomfort as long as I can continue to think freely.

Some of Kierkegaard's devotionals are very good; specifically The Lily In The Field and The Bird of the Air (May 14, 1849).

He reminds us that a Christian must Seek first God's kingdom and his righteousness, and tries to lead us in the search by way of silence. He uses the lily of the field and the bird of the air to demonstrate the art and science of silence in God's creation and Jesus's prodding and words.

When I first read the devotional I thought it counter-intuitive and wrong. What seemed counter-intuitive was Kierkegaard's assertion that the particularity that silence will territorialize protects against the squalor of an expansive generalization. I understood what I didn't understand before when he explained the suffering of the Bird of the air:

The bird is silent and suffers. However heartbroken it is, it is silent. Even the mournful elegist of the desert or of solitude is silent. It sighs three times and then is silent...What it is, it does not say; it does not complain, does not accuse anyone; it sighs only to fall into silence again. It seems as if the silence would burst it; therefore it must sigh in order to be silent. The bird is not exempt from suffering, but the silent bird exempts itself from what makes the suffering harder, the mistaken sympathy of others, from what prolongs the suffering, all the talk about the suffering, from what makes the suffering into what is worse than suffering, into the sin of impatience and sadness...Alas, the human being does not do that. But why is it that human suffering, compared with the bird's suffering, seems so frightful? Is it not because the human being can speak? No, not for that reason, since that, after all, is an advantage, but because the human being cannot be silent. [The Essential Kierkegaard, pgs. 336-37]

My dad has a pacemaker/defibrillator implant. Over the last year and a half it's shocked his heart back into proper rhythm three times. When this happens -he's been sitting down every time it has- it propels his torso forward and while he can't describe the sensation he says that he feels the shock from head to toe. And the thought of it happening again really scares him. A few weeks ago it happened three times in five days, and in October of 2007 it went off seven times in a row without restoring a sustainable rhythm. I've begun to wonder what physiological effects this shock might produce in his brain?

I mention this in conjunction with something of Lewis' that I read a while back. Lewis wrote that a person suffering mental anguish can find momentary relief -however transient and short-lived- in the innumerable nooks and crannies of memory, imagination and hope. He contrasted that with a person suffering serious physical pain and noted that there isn't any commensurate escape from that. I don't remember if he used an example but that's a pretty easy thing for anyone to substitute and contemplate.

There maybe nothing in what Lewis wrote that contradicts Kierkegaard's devotional though. To man, a scream of pain would be what the sigh is to the bird, and not the breaking of silence at all but something necessary that allows for silence to continue and not burst.