What Healing Looks Like
I remember as a teenager, home alone one afternoon, listening over and over to David Bowie sing “Is there Life on Mars?” while gazing at the cover of his Hunky Dory album. I longed to be able to articulate the feelings I had inside me, and somehow this British man wearing makeup came closer than anyone else I’d yet encountered. I remember wondering– if my mother listened to him sing “Is there Life on Mars?” would she at least partially understand the desperation, the hopelessness, the profound alienation I felt all the time? I never dared to ask her. My friends and I got high instead of talking honestly about it all.
I didn’t know yet that I’d come to identify the vague loneliness and misery I felt all the time as heavily influenced by sexism and racism, classism and homophobia, in a declining Midwestern industrial town. I didn’t really get yet, that there were problems that were systemic, that the tiny lives of my friends and me were part of a much larger picture. It wasn’t till I was a young adult, beyond the reach of parents and school systems, accompanied instead by friends who deeply saw and heard me, that I could begin to name the parts of who I was and what I knew.
Last night I went to the “Be Heard Minnesota Youth Poetry Slam Series, 2014,” sponsored by a group called TruArtSpeaks. I saw there a group of young people who have found their voices, and who are speaking and heard at the intensity level I longed for myself as a teenager.
What happens when adults like Tish Jones, the Executive Director of TruArt Speaks, devote their lives to making young voices heard? When their coach Khary Jackson (AKA 6 is 9) takes time to work with them to express themselves clearly and with passion? When a packed house of family, friends, and strangers at a local theater pays and cheers and tells them they have changed us by speaking their hearts?
This is what healing looks like, I found myself thinking, even with wounds that are still gaping, in a world of oppression and violence and addiction and all of the other reasons that these kids and other people suffer. This is where healing begins.
Seven out of the nine contestants were young women of color. They, and the two young men—one African American, one white and openly gay–spoke about the ravages of racism and sexism and homophobia in their lives, of parents who are absent or abusive, of schools designed for them to fail. And there we were, a cheering, clicking, community of support, hanging on their every word. What does that do to a young person, I wonder.
For me, as an adult, as a white person, as a person with power and privilege in the culture, such an encounter also means healing. My healing begins with listening, and believing, young people, and marginalized people, the way I wanted my own mother to hear me. It begins with paying attention. And it extends to supporting the organizations and leaders who elicit these voices, in understanding that without people like Tish Jones and Khary Jackson, the safety to tell stories in that theater would not have been present for the young people on the stage.
This is what healing looks like. Led by the courageous, the ones who speak truths denied by louder voices, supported by love and respect. This is what healing looks like.
I feel profoundly blessed to have attended the slam last night, and to be represented as a Minneostan by the six young people who will move on to the national levels of competition as spoken word artists. But, as the MC kept saying over and over last night, This isn’t about competition. It’s about community, and leadership development, and having a good time together. And we did.
Healing of Memories
At this time of year, we have many opportunities to join together with family and friends, to celebrate, to tell stories, to share memories. Because these holidays are most often colored in happy hues and we look forward to good food and fun-filled events with family and friends, it is easy to focus on happy memories, memories that we treasure and tell again year after year.
But memories are not always happy. Bad things happen. Sometimes these memories are of personal tragedies, while other times they are related to larger national or cultural struggles. What do we do about those memories?
I recently read Redeeming the Past: My Journey from Freedom Fighter to Healer, a new memoir by Fr. Michael Lapsley, an Anglican priest from New Zealand who was sent by his religious order to South Africa in the early 1970s. The book describes his early years in apartheid South Africa and his growing identification as a white man with the struggle against apartheid and the ANC. These activities soon got him evicted from the country, first to Lesotho and finally to Zimbabwe. His continued activism resulted in a letter bombing in 1990 that cost him his hands and one eye. It was these injuries that led to him considering how memories of the apartheid oppression continued to impact him and many in South Africa, even after Mandela had been released, the ANC was unbanned, apartheid was dismantled, and a new non-racial constitutional democracy established.
His own testimony before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission began his process of considering how one can heal such memories. The TRC had provided a forum where victims could be heard and believed… could be listened to. Stories spilled out… many of terrible abuse at the hands of the apartheid state, but others by the hands of the liberation movement. “Every story was given equal dignity, and both were seen as wrongs” (p.142). Building on his personal story and his work with the Trauma Centre in Cape Town, he began to see that political freedom was important but not enough. “As a people, we were, and in many ways still are, imprisoned by the memories of the past” (p. 117). Fr. Michael began to see that the TRC was just a beginning. What was needed was a parallel process that would allow all those affected by the long history of oppression in South Africa to work through those memories with others and to in fact heal them. He sought a way to “break the chain of history” that stretched back to the earliest history of the region. He realised that oppressed people who see themselves as victims frequently become victimizers of others, justifying their actions because of past wrongs. This vicious cycle had to stop, but how?
From these experiences has grown his life ministry –the Institute for the Healing of Memories .The Institute facilitates 3-day workshops during which participants tell their stories and listen to the stories of others. The hurts visited one on another are acknowledged and understood. Participants are often able to come to a place where memories as well as relationships can be healed, allowing the possibility of the healing of society at large. While located in South Africa, Fr. Michael has taken the workshop to many other parts of the world where memories also need to be healed after conflict and oppression.
So my question in reading Fr. Michael’s memoir is, how might healing of memories be applied in our individual lives? All too often a victim’s stories seem to elicit the response from the “listener” of a similar experience (often with the implication that the listener’s experience was more difficult). Such “pity parties” often devolve into “my oppression is worse than your oppression.”
What might happen if I were to really listen to what the other person has to share, really listen. What might I learn? How might my attentive listening affect the speaker? What might the outcome be if we all were able to share our stories, our memories, in an accepting environment. What would happen if we each actually tried to hear each other?
For So the Children Come
For each child that’s born
A morning star rises
and sings to the universe
who we are
On November 12th of this year, three congregations co-ordained me, giving me a new name – Reverend Deanna Vandiver. On the morning of December 21st, Katherine Grace was born and I received another name – Aunt De!
Beloveds, that every child born could arrive so loved, so cared for as my beautiful niece, baby Kate… For so the children come into this world, into our lives, and we – we are called to love them enough to begin what Howard Thurman called the work of Christmas: “finding the lost, healing the broken, feeding the hungry, releasing prisoners, rebuilding nations, making peace among brothers [and sisters], making music in the heart.”
There is no such thing as “somebody else’s baby.” They are all our children, our beloved miracles of life to care for, to care about, and to commit to healing a broken world so that they may not suffer unnecessarily. As our nation grieves the death of the slain children in Newtown, CT, we are deeply aware of our accountability for their lives and the lives of all children who are harmed by violence and the devaluation of life.
Unitarian Universalist theology tells us that we are a part of an interconnected web of creation, related to and in relationship with each thread of creation. Our society tells us that we are isolated individuals, worth only what we can produce or inherit, and that violence is a credible response to violence. We tenders of the web of life know that violence increases alienation & fear, hides the connections we have to each other, allows us to become numb to the miracle of life, to the wonders of this universe.
My mother has a calendar of days in her bathroom. On the day my niece was born, the wisdom of the calendar instructed “Give people a piece of your heart, instead of a piece of your mind.” Navigating the dynamics of multiple families, hospital policies, and fear for my baby sister’s health with very little sleep, that nugget of wisdom was salvific for me. Life lived from a place of gratitude and wonder is very different from a life lived from a place of ingratitude, anger, and fear.
We who grieve the beloveds of Sandy Hook Elementary are also called to grieve the 800 “civilian casualties” of our country’s drone strikes in Pakistan in the last four years, for the children who are caught in cross-fire in our urban centers, for every child who has lost a parent in the endless US military actions. We understand that we are not called to stand on the side of love for some children. We are called to stand on the side of love for all children. No matter what we think about their choices, their policies, or their cultures, our hearts are called to honor the inherent worth and dignity of all creation.
Beloveds, each child that’s born is a holy child. You are a miracle. So is your neighbor. As we swim through the ocean of the universe, may we remember this wisdom born of a child called Jesus. Love your neighbor as yourself – and beloveds, love yourself – because if you cannot have compassion for the spark of creation that is your being, you will be able to deny compassion to other sparks of creation.
Give yourself and your neighbor a piece of your heart instead of a piece of your mind. See how quickly this begins the work of Christmas…
For so the children come, and so they have been coming for thousands of years…may each child born find peace and love in our hearts and good will toward all of creation as we commit to doing the work of Christmas.
For each child that’s born
A morning star rises
and sings to the universe
who we are
The Day After Newtown: Finding Our Way
And so we wake up the morning after, and it wasn’t a dream. The children are still dead, the teachers beside them. It is another day, a gray one, where people and animals must be fed and life will go on no matter how we feel.
Many of us took the occasion, yesterday, to find one another and weep. The people of Newtown wept. The President wept. Many of us watched them online and wept along with them. Many of us gathered, with our families, or friends, or in churches, or online, to weep together.
And today the weeping will continue. But along with weeping, those of us who are not in the center of the tragedy will begin, together, to grope our way along in the darkness and imagine what we might do besides weep. Some will begin researching gun control organizations and join them. Some will call for a March on Washington. Some will argue endlessly on facebook about whether gun control would have helped. Some will call for us, instead or as well, to address the issues of mental illness more aggressively. Some will simply be with their own families, grief sharpening their gratitude for all they have.
Of everything that I heard yesterday, and of everything that was cited by others last night in the three hour online time of mourning that my congregation held on our Livestream channel, the #1 cited words of comfort came not from Scripture or Shakespeare, but from Mr. Rogers. These four words, people lifted up over and over: Look for the helpers. Look for the helpers.
The full context of Fred Rogers quote is this: When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”
And so, yesterday, many of us were awed by the thousands of people who surrounded the scene of the tragedy to help. We spoke with reverence of the courageous teachers who never stopped helping through the whole event. We spoke of first responders and politicians and counselors who helped and will help.
Today, as we wrestle with complex emotions and struggle to imagine what we might do ourselves, how we might go on, I suggest that we use Fred Rogers’ words as our compass. As we are about to take an action, as we are choosing what to do or not do, say or not say, we can ask ourselves, “Does this help? Am I a helper? If someone is looking for the helpers, will they see this? Will my action give hope to children who are looking for it?”
We may have different ideas about what exactly will help. But we have some pretty good hunches. Some things we’ll all agree on. Listening to each other as we process the event will help. Giving a child the most precious gift of all: our full attention, floor or lap time, will help. Engaging in activities which strengthen our connection to our neighbors and our local community will help.
And I believe that strategic and focused action to limit the carrying and use of weapons will help. Better options and care for people with mental illness will help. Some of us, me included, will put some of our helping energy in this direction.
However we are called to help, may we be bold about it. May we allow our commitments, our action, to be visible. May we claim our power to act, to care, to change the world. As we move out into our day, our week, and 2013, may we be part of the healing.
Through the Roof
There’s a transformational story in the fifth chapter of Luke (verses 17-26). Jesus is teaching in a home (probably an upscale home, given the tile roof), and there are many people from Galilee, Judea, and Jerusalem. Even the scribes and Pharisees were there. They were always checking up on Jesus to make sure he wasn’t causing too much trouble. It was standing room only, and the door was blocked. A few guys brought a friend, who was paralyzed, in his bed to be healed, but the crowd was so big that they couldn’t get through the door to see Jesus. The people didn’t even make way to let these guys through. Maybe you’ve been to this church where newcomers weren’t even noticed, and where the members stand at the entrance talking to each other?
Not being deterred, these men actually went up to the roof and lowered their paralyzed friend in his bed through the ceiling tiles to see Jesus. When Jesus saw their faith, he said, “Your sins are forgiven.” Of course, as they always did, the scribes and Pharisees jumped right on that one and challenged Jesus, saying, “Who is this who speaks blasphemy…only God can forgive sins.” Jesus answered, “Why do you question in your hearts? Which is easier to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk.’ I’m going to prove to you that the son of man has the authority to forgive sins.”
The translation “son of man,” “barnash” in Aramaic, does not necessarily mean the “son of God.” It is not exclusively a reference to divinity, but refers to humanity. Jesus isn’t talking about himself as a divine arbiter. He is saying, “I’m going to prove to you that mere mortals can also offer forgiveness,” which he had just done.
Back to the story, Jesus turned to the man in the bed and said, “Rise, pick up your bed, and go home.” And that’s just what the man did. Everyone there was amazed and said, “We have seen extraordinary things today.”
Suspend for a minute the idea that this was a literal healing. I believe that to take everything in the Bible literally actually limits its potential and power. When Thomas Jefferson cut the miracles out of his Bible, I think he missed the point. He was taking these miracles too literally and wasn’t open to the power of metaphor.
If we allow this story to be metaphorical, then it is even more instructive to us today—timeless in its power. Too often the members of congregations, ordinary people of all walks of life, sit around and do their own thing. This is the status quo. We do things the way they’ve always been done, and sometimes forget that there are others who are excluded and cannot do the things that we take for granted and do on a regular basis. The paralyzed man wanted a change. He wanted transformation in his life. His friends wanted it for them. Perhaps this was just an intervention. But they couldn’t even get through the door. They couldn’t even be part of the status quo. Most people would have just given up, but these guys decided to come through the roof. They changed the status quo by changing the rules. In the end, it wasn’t Jesus who healed the paralyzed man. It was his own faith. He came to that synagogue to be transformed. Jesus just said, “Your faith is strong. Your sins are forgiven.” Sin doesn’t always mean that we’ve done something bad, just that we’ve “missed the mark.” Whatever this man had tried to heal his paralysis hadn’t worked. Jesus just presented the obvious. “Get up. Walk.” Too often when we are stuck, stifled, and paralyzed in life, we forget to do the obvious.