PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): In their lust to prove there's no God, atheists
often invoke the existence of suffering. "What kind of deity," one asked
me, "allows a child in Darfur to starve to death after seeing soldiers kill his
mommy?" While I don't claim to have the authoritative answer to that
accusation, I think it's worthwhile to consider the possibility that suffering
is a gift God gives us in order to prod our evolution. On a personal level,
your longing to escape your suffering is a primal force in making you
smarter. On a collective level, nothing refines and ennobles us more than
our passion to keep others from suffering. For every dead child in Darfur,
100 people in other places on the planet have responded with a radical
commitment to create a world in which future Darfurs won't happen.
These are worthy ideas for you to meditate on in the coming weeks. You
will have a tremendous capacity to convert your old wounds, as well as
the old wounds of others, into brilliant opportunities.