"You too, O Pain, create man"

"A poet"

"Even so are you: pain must shatter your shells before you can know the meaning of life."

"Gibran, in The Prophet"

"Blessed are they that suffer, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven"

"The Nazarene"

... Pain! Pain!

What heart has not drunk deep from its springs?

What eye has not looked down upon heaps of its victims?

What ear has not been reached by the voices of the millions of sufferers, roaring as if with the madness of all that is on earth and all that is in heaven??

What hand has not touched a thousand wounds in a thousand bodies, in a thousand hearts?

No god was ever crucified but on the wood of pain!

No messenger was ever stoned but with the stones of pain!

No child was ever born on earth but at the hand of pain!

No new religion ever arose in the world but upon the book of pain!

No beautiful, sublime idea was ever created but pain was its creator!

Humanity never walked one step toward God but pain guided its steps!

We never fled from its face but we met it in every face.

We never shut our eyes to the sight of it but we found it in our hearts, eating of them as they eat of it.

Pain!

Pain!

It is the weaver of our wedding garments and of the shrouds of our coffins!

The cook of our food, and the one seated at our tables!

We meet it...

In our virtues and in our faults...

In our lusts, the pure and the criminal, in our love and in our hate, in our triumph and in our defeat, in our beauty and in our ugliness..

Pain!

Bind us, O God, to the holy wood!

The wood on which Socrates died smiling. And Jesus, praying, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do..."