Accumulated stories of pain have informed my belief that the world and my neighbors are feeling lot of pain. Actually, always have and always will. Pain isn’t going anywhere.
As a minister, and twice as much as a chaplain, I was constantly involved in hearing and identifying pain in someone’s life.
I’m talking about a variety of identifiable pains. Societal Pain, Relational Pain, Financial Pain, Mental Pain, Abuse Pain, War Trauma Pain, Spiritual Pain,Existential Pain as well as the standard Physical Pain.
I have yet to find anyone that identifies these and other types of pain as I am suggesting. Occasionally the word distress is substituted for pain in some cases, such as Mental Distress, or Financial Stress.
For me, the words have become nearly interchangeable. Distress and Pain both change us and require therapy or healing or improvement in our condition. Whether I am correct in my use and definition of these terms I cannot say for sure, but I do know I have seen many a lifetime of pain in my ministerial work.
One Hospice care leader in the UK came close to my thinking, in fact I probably owe much of my thinking to her. Her name was Dame Cicely Saunders. More about her to come. Her concept was Total Pain. More about that as well.