From suffering to healing

“Undergoing suffering isn't a virtue at all, and it's unlikely to create any,” wrote Susan Neiman.

Nonetheless, we are all wounded somehow, and we have to admit it to heal ourselves. "He who conceals his disease cannot be cured,
" holds an Ethiopian proverb. Furthermore, internalizing the perspective granted by our suffering enables us to empathize with others. Erich Neumann wrote, “As the myth puts it, only a wounded man can be a healer, a physician. Because in his own suffering the creative man experiences the profound wounds of his collectivity and his time, he carries deep within him a regenerative force capable of bringing forth a cure not only for himself but also for the community.”

Diana Butler Bass: “We practice healing, and as we practice it, we learn the quiet dimensions of shalom, the unheralded dimensions of salvation, of compassion and charity.”

Sources

Susan Neiman. Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grownup Idealists. Quoted in Nikki Stern. Because I Say So: The Dangerous Appeal of Moral Authority. Bascom Hill Books, 2010. p. 12.

Ethiopian proverb. Quoted in UTNE Reader, July/August 1999

Erich Neumann, "Creative Man and Transformation," published in his book of four essays Art and the Creative Unconscious. Translated by Ralph Manheim. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1966. p. 186.

Diana Butler Bass, Christianity for the Rest of Us: How the Neighborhood Church is Transforming the Faith, HarperSanFrancisco, 2006. p. 113.