Danielle LaPorte wrote in her blog today, “There is no excuse for going hungry.  We are here to feast.”

Follow-up for yesterday’s blog: Are you a rich poor guy or a poor rich guy?

We don’t have to deprive ourselves to feel noble. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote, “Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.”

That is true, but with a caveat. Unearned suffering means unjust, unfair, unwarranted. But the key is using that suffering for redemption. We can’t just sit back and moan. We have to take our suffering to a new level. Turn it into speech, song, art, dance. Redemption is when you take the pain you are in, however terrible it is, and transform it into something noble, good, beautiful.

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever,” wrote Keats. Turning our pain into art. Sitting at the banquet of sorrow and using it, somehow, to gain wisdom, strength, beauty.

“You have been the veterans of creative suffering,” King wrote. The key is creative. Find the pain and use it, use it, use it. Don’t let it use you. Don’t be a poor rich guy. Be a rich poor guy. A rich sad guy. A rich crippled guy. Take whatever you own and run with it, leap over it, burn it into beauty. Be a hero in your life today. Save yourself by turning your unearned suffering into some kind of grace and glory.