Pain teaches a most counterintuitive thing—that we must go down before we even know what up is. It is first an ordinary wound before it can become a sacred wound. Suffering of some sort seems to be the only thing strong enough to destabilize our arrogance and our ignorance. I would define suffering very simply as “whenever you are not in control.”

All healthy religion shows you what to do with your pain. If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it. If your religion is not showing you how to transform your pain, it is junk religion. It is no surprise that a crucified man became the central symbol of Christianity.

Until you can forgive and include all of the parts-every part belonging, every part forgiven, even the tragic parts now seen as necessary lessons—you cannot come home.

The full gift of the final journey is discovering that you are already home. I hope you have seen it in at least some elders in your lifetime. They are at home in their own bodies, their own lives, and their own minds.

When you succeed at your real task, or what I like to call “the task within the task,” then wherever God leads you, it doesn’t really matter. Home is no longer a geographic place. It is a place where everything belongs, everything can be held, and everything is another lesson and another gift. The saint and the true elder grow from everything, even and especially their failures.

Richard Rohr