The Identity of Pain

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter… ©

It’s 14 degrees below zero [F] in the “Place of Winter” this morning, with a strong wind. There is a lot of pain for people who have to be out, or whose homes don’t have adequate heat. It’s a different pain from that of cancer and other ills of the body, but it pulls you into yourself, makes you hunker down, into a prison of cold. That reminded me of something I wrote about pain…

“Now that I have cancer, I’m in a prison of pain. That is also a cell of uniqueness, of feeling, of spirituality. I’m released from thought to walk in the fog and feel its soft and shifting contact. I am a unique person, because the pain I feel is mine alone.”

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP], where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.]

I used to keep a careful index of all the things I told in this blog so that I would not repeat. That has become unwieldy. Now I just trust to… what’s it called… oh, yes, memory. Sorry about repeats.

I have also started an author blog, JUST WORDS, about writing and reading. Writing guru Kristen Lamb says author blogs are counter-productive, that blogs must be “high concept.” I don’t know what that means, but consider Just Words as a high concept blog in preparation for the publication, by Black Opal Books, of my novel, VETS, about four handicapped and homeless Iraqistan veterans who are accused of murdering a VA doctor, in 2015. http://johnrobertmcfarland-author.blogspot.com/

I tweet as yooper1721.