ABSTRACT
The focus of the art of suffering appears to be the unexceptional kind of external affliction which Richard Rogers describes in his Seven Treatises. The art of suffering thus appears to be essentially concerned with external, painful events in the life of the individual. These events may be major or minor, natural, financial, political, religious, social or domestic. Making suffering 'sufferable' by alleviating the mental distress which it entails also has subtle but persistent social implications. The abrupt transformation in the nature of the art of suffering, however, suggests the burst of energy released at the point of collapse of some kind of dam on the tide of ideological change. In the context of the art of suffering there are two contrasting but complementary directions in particular which carry social implications, over and the general instruction to bear affliction as 'directed by the Lord'.
