"[An] awful situation can bring something [we need] to us. The fullest realization of this something-needed requires consciousness. And to be CONSCIOUS, we will need the right attitude--mainly opening ourselves to God's purpose in allowing this situation to distress us.
/// HOW we will come to understand/profit from this situation: THROUGH WORK THAT GROWS SOMETHING in us. This must be freely chosen work--just like [in Montessori] we allow children to freely choose work in the primary class. And just like something unexpected happens with the children (normalization), something special will happen to us (becoming closer to God.)
In choosing the work, we follow Christ who freely chose his work on the cross. The magic is not simply in the sacrifice, but also in the work we do once we commit to the work (just like the hell a criminal creates for himself is not simply in the selfishness that motivates him, but is also in the work--work we describe as COMMITTING the crime.) Together committment and its work grows a substance, whether holy or hellish, and this substance becomes part of our being, enlightening or 'fleshifying' us.
So maybe that says it all. But let me say it again in a little different way.
The right attitude makes our life-challenge lifegiving. The understanding this will bring us is not merely something external in the world, nor is it something understood just by the mind. It is understanding that, via work, takes root in our substance and permeates our being. (a 'mind-body' caught between heaven and earth and residing beside our brothers in the world.) As the 'understanding/Holy-intent' of this event takes shape in the wake of time's flow (I'm alluding to a 'wake' of a boat that travels through the water) it is not simply something we see. It isn't even simply something that takes form/substance. It is something that GROWS inside us and changes us in a way that will tend to spread that change into the whole of (local) creation (i.e., you affect those around you differently because of a new quality inside you.) For the purity and high quality of that, we need to approach this (awful) event with the right attitude.
I think the stark truth is that God is bringing a new way onto earth. And we are among many conscious agents that He uses. There may be some pain, but it is nothing compared with Jesus's sacrifice on the cross. And the brighter future for man is bought at the price of the sacrifices of those who have gone before.
Each of us will sacrifice, each for his own reasons. Indeed all the world of man will individually sacrifice--most driven unwillingly. But some of the sacrifices will be CONSCIOUS ones. These are the sacrifices born out of love. Through these love will spread. It will not come from the outside raining down on us. It will ooze out from inside men, first from the conscious agents whose sacrifices create the situation where love CAN grow and with whose personal commitments to God, love DOES grow. And later this spirit will spread. Love is the yeast hidden in the dough which makes it grow until it is so big that everyone sees it (alluding to one of Jesus's parables.)"
[C. Nichols; July 15th 2006; slightly reedited from an email]
