Beautiful Suffering

So a while back I heard the phrase somewhere 'beautifully suffered' and it really struck a chord in my head. 

What is beautiful suffering? 

What causes it? 

How do you suffer beautifully? 

One night, when I just kept thinking about this phrase I'd heard somewhere, I wrote this: 


How does one beautifully suffer? 

Is it like Jesus' suffering? 
His pain and anguish for us to live 
Forgiven and uncondemned. 

Or is it simply someone who is beautiful, 
Suffering? 

Or is it more? 

Like to suffering of grief 
At the loss of a loved one 
who was so brutally stolen 

Or the undeserved suffering of women, 
Raped and abused. 
Of those tortured by cowards and thieves of love, 
Simply for what they believe? 

The agony at losing a newly born child, 
Who was given no chance at life, 
The toys and daffodils lying untouched and neglected by the grave. 

The stab that reappears 
In every great achievement, 
Knowing that a buried parent will never share 
In the triumph and rejoicing. 

Or the knowledge that 
The one you long for 
Is yearning for another, 
Who is not you. 

Just what does it mean? 

I then asked my dad about the phrase and what he thought, and he told me that I had heard it from a poem by R S Thomas, called The Musician, if you were interested; 

A memory of Kreisler once:
At some recital in this same city,
The seats all taken, I found myself pushed
On to the stage with a few others,
So near that I could see the toil
Of his face muscles, a pulse like a moth
Fluttering under the fine skin
And the indelible veins of his smooth brow.

I could see, too, the twitching of the fingers,
Caught temporarily in art’s neurosis,
As we sat there or warmly applauded
This player who so beautifully suffered
For each of us upon his instrument.

So it must have been on Calvary
In the fiercer light of the thorns’ halo:
The men standing by and that one figure,
The hands bleeding, the mind bruised but calm,
Making such music as lives still.
And no one daring to interrupt
Because it was himself that he played
And closer than all of them the God listened. 

I'm not sure if you can call what I've written a poem, but I enjoy writing out my thoughts and it helps me pick what I'm puzzled about apart. 

Keep smiling! :-)