Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.
-- Helen Keller
Suffering is powerful in at least 2 ways; it gives quick and deep opportunity to recognize our need for God and it makes us accessible to others. Outside of suffering, there is often one kind of separation or another going on between humans -- hierarchies and comparison seems ever-present. Suffering over and over seems to level the playing field and draws our spirits together...perhaps because it reveals to us, like nothing else, how we are the same. When we acknowledge how we are alike, we are converted to compassion.
And, compassion ennobles everyone.
