Scott Cairns & The End of Suffering: Finding Purpose in Pain

Scott Cairns shares insights from his recently published book "The End of Suffering: Finding Purpose in Pain." He writes "Given affliction's generous availability, and given the wide but so-far-unsatisfying range of apologia that the nagging enigma of our human suffering has provoked over the years, I thought I might press ahead for a somewhat more satisfying glimpse of why it is we suffer, and why it is that some of us--even among the apparently innocent--appear to suffer far more than others." Cairns teaches modern and contemporary American literature and creative writing at the University of Missouri. His poems have appeared in Poetry, The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, The New Republic, Image, Spiritus, and Tiferet, and have been anthologized in Upholding Mystery (Oxford UP '96), Best Spiritual Writing (Harper Collins '98 and '00), and Best American Spiritual Writing (Houghton Mifflin, 04, 05, and '06). His poetry collections include Compass of Affection: Poems New and Selected(Paraclete Press, 06), Philokalia (Zoo Press '02), Recovered Body (Braziller '98), Figures for the Ghost (U Georgia P '94), The Translation of Babel, (U of Georgia P '90), and The Theology of Doubt (Cleveland State UP '85). With W. Scott Olsen, he co-edited The Sacred Place (U of Utah P '96), an anthology of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. His spiritual memoir, Short Trip to the Edge: Where Earth Meets Heaven, (HarperSanFrancisco) and a collection of adaptations and translations, Loves Immensity: Mystics on the Endless Life (Paraclete Press), both appeared in 2007. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2006. His book-length essay, The End of Suffering, will appear from Paraclete Press in November, 2009. This event is sponsored by the Wabash College Lecture Committee, the McGregor Visiting Artists Fund, and the English and Religion Departments.

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Education

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• Wabash
• College
• Scott
• Cairns
• End
• Suffering
• Purpose
• Pain