Station 9

Questions:

What’s the most pain you’ve ever felt?

What pain are you carrying right now?

What have you not attempted because of the fear of pain?

Meditation:

The image for this station is three nails together to make the shape of a cross. They represent the three spikes that were impaled into the body of Jesus in the process of crucifixion.  Have you ever considered that it’s not the wooden planks in crucifixion that are menacing but the hardware that attaches you to the wood?

The long physical pain of crucifixion was excruciating. In fact, the word excruciating is derived from crucifixion. They created a word out of witnessing the pain found in the experience of being crucified.

Jesus partook in pain.

Maybe more intense pain than any of us ever will. I don’t know. I’ve never been tortured, so I can’t compare my pain experience to the experience of being crucified. I’ve also never birthed a baby and I’ve been informed by many a mother that as a man I will never know how excruciating that experience is.

The most pain I’ve ever experienced was sitting through a six hour tattoo. It felt like being tortured. I didn’t think I was going to be able to handle it. In the process I had to learn how to work through the pain. How to focus my breathing and hold onto the little pockets of relief when the needle was removed from my skin. It’s been three years since and I still don’t know if I’m wanting to go under the needle again.

What I’m saying is we’ve all had various kinds of pain experiences and I want to tenderly remind ourselves that it’s not a competition.

Pain is experienced by all human bodies because pain is not something outside of our body but something we experience in our body. Pain is an embodied experience, which means we can never get a way from pain. Oh we try, and we’ve created fantastical inventions to numb, diminish, or sever the pain within our bodies. But we all remember the pain, and the possibility of pain is something we always carry around.

Death would actually be the relief. It’s the excruciating pain that frightens us.