Passion, suffering, being acted upon, conforming oneself to another are among the most fundamental aspects of our human experience. Without these experiences, we would not be who we are. It is in suffering, in waiting strenuously in the midst of struggle and in letting go that we come to be most fully who we are called to be. Harvard University Press, 1982. It is only through the experience of passion and suffering that we are opened to self-transcendence, to the becoming that we most fundamentally are.
Several images seem helpful.
The first is the passionate suffering a mother knows in standing by her child, allowing the child to struggle, experiment, make mistakes and eventually to find her own way. The second is of a group of Maine farmers who went out in the spring to watch large colonies of monarch butterflies emerge from their cocoons. Moved by the struggle of the butterflies to break free, the farmers began helping break open the cocoons until they noticed that the butterflies they helped were unable to fly properly. Only those butterflies that had endured the struggle could fly freely. Come in and take a nice hot bath and let yourself be loved.