Wounded Healer

Wounded Healer

“To be a conscious person in this world, to be aware of all the suffering and the beauty, means to have your heart broken over and over again.” Sharon Salzberg, “Daily Quote,”InwardOutward.org, May 31, 2018.

Sharon Salzberg is an author and teacher of Buddhist meditation practices. Those in Christian and psychological traditions will recognize this Buddhist belief we share as the Christian and Jungian teaching of the wounded healer. The best healers are those who also have experienced and have known the most about suffering. We daily see this in our small group grief recovery group, Walking the Mourner’s Path. Three or four of us are the facilitators holding the group together. The real healers are those participating in the group who are trying to live through the death of a loved one and know something about what the others in the group are thinking and feeling. The same is true for all of those in 12-step recovery groups.

When we talk with spiritual friends who are suffering, we listen and listen and listen. At some point they will mention someone else who is suffering who helped or reached out to them. This is our clue subtlety to tell them that perhaps at some future date they can be able do the same for someone else. It is the old native American message of having walked in someone else’s moccasins that gives us compassion for that person when we have a hint of what his or her life is like.

Sometimes the only resurrection that we ever see in tremendous suffering is developing an awareness of what it is like for others who are also in distress.

We have a choice, bitterness for the suffering or an understanding of compassion for others who also struggle.

Four disciplines are telling us this same message about the wounded healer. I know there must be other traditions as well who are sending this message. When several disciplines intersect, for me this is a sign of a truth.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

One opportunity Sunday March 10 to purchase a signed copy of A Daily Spiritual Rx for Lent and Easter at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Little Rock in the narthex after the 8 and 10:30 services. Proceeds from the book go for hurricane relief in the Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast.

Love Overcomes

Love

“Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offences.” Proverbs 10:12

We are all banking on this being true. I think of all my offences, the evil I have done, the harm I have done consciously or unconsciously, the friends, the family members I have hurt. I make amends when I can for the harm I have done, but mostly I try to make living amends. I hope to learn to love the way my granddaughter, Langley, is doing to this young child on her mission trip. I want to hold closely the Christ in others and let them know what a treasure they are. I want to be able to see the Christ in them. This is what spiritual friends do for each other. They affirm, stand by each other.

More often now I am paying it forward. For many reasons I cannot make amends to the person I have harmed, but instead I try to show the love I wish I could now give to them to someone else. Paying forward is showing love to someone else that has done nothing for us, especially someone we do not know and often someone who feels loveless.

I try, I judge, I make mistakes, I mess up, I hurt others, I make amends, I try to show love that has been so often unconditionally given to me, and the cycle seems invariably to start all over again. It is a circular path. It is the human condition. I try to stay connected to this circular pathway of others who know more than I know how to love and hope to learn from them. I can so easily see Christ in them and occasionally they can see the Christ in me which guides me back onto the path of love.

Today, I now learn most about how to love from my grandchildren. What a circular life, for I first learned about love from my own grandparents many years ago.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

One opportunity Sunday March 10 to purchase a signed copy of A Daily Spiritual Rx for Lent and Easter at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Little Rock in the narthex after the 8 and 10:30 services. Proceeds from the book go for hurricane relief in the Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast.

Solomon and Wells: Is Love Stronger

Solomon and Wells: Is Love Stronger?

“Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame.” Song of Solomon 8: 6.

Samuel Wells is the vicar at St. Martins-in-the-Fields in London and a frequent writer for Christian Century who last week spoke at Pulaski Heights United Methodist Church in Little Rock. He recently titled his article in Christian Century, “Is Love Stronger.”1 Wells tells the story of visiting with the husband of a wife who committed suicide whom he did not know and hearing their story, then delivering the homily at her service suggesting that all is now well. When he went to visit the husband a week later, he was met with anger about his homily. All had not been well with the woman who had a painful wasting disease and all was not well with her husband. The husband said he told Wells that before the funeral.

Wells said he learned from this experience that when being with people living with tragedy or living in the aftermath of tragedy, all he has to offer is his presence beside them. There are not words to make the situation better and attempts to clean up the situation do not affirm the difficulty they are facing. Wells believes that his role is “not to make things better for someone. It’s to face the truth with them.” This is what the love stronger than death is. It is presence, not words.

This is also true when we meet with spiritual friends. Trying to see God in any difficult situation often is just listening to our friend’s story and letting them know that we are beside them. We are not there to make things better, but to be a loving presence beside them in a great storm. In times of great tragedy, I remember people who just came and sat beside me and cried with me. Often the person who can best do this is someone who has known a similar tragedy. This is the love stronger than death.

1 Samuel Wells, “Is love stronger?” Faith Matters, Christian Century, April 25, 2018, p. 35.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

One opportunity Sunday March 10 to purchase a signed copy of A Daily Spiritual Rx for Lent and Easter at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Little Rock in the narthex after the 8 and 10:30 services. Proceeds from the book go for hurricane relief in the Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast.