Conversation on the Dung Heap: Reflections on Job

Catastrophic illness brings pain, suffering, chaos, and loss. It's not only the ill who suffer but all who are aware of the tragedy. Conversation on the Dung Heap: Reflections on Job acknowledges that pain exists in a world where life is hard, humbling, and finite. Rosemary Hubble demonstrates how Job's story of suffering and grief can be a source of comfort today when catastrophe strikes. Many turn to religious texts for comfort in times of trouble. But for people affected by catastrophic illnesses, traditional religious interpretations may be either negative, inadequate, or confusing. In this work, Hubble offers Job as a model for those in pain. She identifies Job as an archetype for humanity?vulnerable to loss, suffering, and grief?and shows how the text of Job reveals the chaos tragedy brings into life and how those afflicted with a catastrophic disease can analyze their religious traditions and transform them to allow for the in-breaking of God. Hubble uncovers the similarities between Job's story and our own, revealing how Job provides a touchstone for all people to reflect upon as they face the dissonance, disorder, and pain associated with today's tragedies. She uses AIDS as a metaphor, comparing Job's affliction and his casting out to the "dung heap" to today's emotional and social responses to those with catastrophic illnesses. She also explores pain, suffering and loss by juxtaposing stages in Job's story with Dorothee Soelle's three phases of suffering and Kubler Ross' stages of dying. She discusses the role of Job's three friends in processing his grief-associated anger. Each chapter ends with reflections from the author's own experience and short statements for the reader to contemplate. The ancient text of Job has no simple answers?no quick fix for today's troubles?but speaks passionately of the suffering innate to human existence, validates the human response to tragedy, and reveals a God who cares for the human spirit. Conversation on the Dung Heap: Reflections on Job shows that Job's story is a story for all. The journey Job takes to find God in a time of suffering and death is our journey as well. Chapters include "Job has AIDS," "Chaos," "Why Job?" "Sit with Job," "Job Speaks," and "Epiphany.""Hubble turns the eye of the reader's heart to the dungheap of negative experience as the region of God's constant coming. A wise and sobering conversation in which we are challenged to look long and lovingly at vulnerability, suffering, diminishment, and loss as precincts of epiphany." Michael Downey Author of Hope Begins Where Hope Begins"I never find that the Book of Job gets easier to read. Rosemary Hubble suggests why that is?its pieces and voices mirror the chaos experienced by people under siege by suffering, especially from AIDS. With a sensitive eye and ear she probes the pain and suffering she has shared as a Hospice nurse. She finds Job not an answer but a spirituality to stay the course, whether sitting in silence or listening attentively to our contemporary lament." John Endres, S.J."Rosemary Hubble is a hospice nurse, a theologian, and a person of deep and questioning faith. Her admirable book unites these gifts in a way that lets the book of Job and our own experience of suffering illuminate each other?and so enhance our ability to speak and think of the Holy in our own times of trouble. It is a book that leaps boundaries and gives new insight." The Rev. Professor L. Wm. Countryman The Church Divinity School of the Pacific