Wounded Healers

 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, InwardOutward.org, “Daily Quote,” 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 as the Christian and Jungian teaching of the wounded healer.

The best healers are those who have experienced and understand the most about suffering. We see this daily in our small group grief recovery group, Walking the Mourner’s Path. Three or four of us serve as facilitators, holding the group together. The real healers are the group members who try to live through the death of a loved one and begin to empathize with what others in the group are feeling.

The same is true for 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 and who helped or reached out to them. This is our subtle cue to tell them that perhaps, at some future time, they can do the same for someone else. It echoes the old Native American message of having walked in someone else’s moccasins, which gives us compassion for that person when we have a hint of what their life is like.

Christianity teaches us that we, like Thomas, are healed by the scars of the wounds of Christ.

caravaggio

Sometimes, the only resurrection we 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 over suffering or an understanding rooted in compassion for others who also struggle.

I see wounded healers as the pearls that oysters form from irritants in their shells. Sometimes, these are “pearls of great price.”

Five disciplines convey this same message about the wounded healer. I believe there are also other traditions sharing this message.

For me, when several disciplines intersect, it signals truth.

Joanna https://www.joannaseibert.com/

 

View from Our Windows

Windows

“A Window covered with raindrops interests me more than a photograph of a famous person.”—Saul Leiter, artist and photographer.

 “View From My Window” is a social media group that calls me out of bed each morning, as I long to refocus my life from more than the world outside my window. Stunning photography from around the globe enlarges my connection to universal beauty from Europe, Africa, South America, Australia, Canada, and other parts of North America.

 Flowers of every possible species, forests, elephants, bobcats, oceans, tidal pools, mountain ranges, snow in Austin, Texas, and northern lights in Iceland and Alaska wake me daily to beauty beyond my normal vision.

Being in or seeing nature is one of my best ways to connect to God. Each morning, I take a visual journey into the presence of creation in all its splendor beyond the bounds of my own home to someone else’s view that I will probably never meet.

Each morning, I see a part of the beauty of the outdoors that I would have never seen in my lifetime. Occasionally, I share the view outside my window of woodpeckers and cardinals, Carolina chickadees, and blue jays, who visit the feeder beyond my floor-to-ceiling window, which takes up almost an entire wall in my home office.

Still, my favorite sight is when my granddaughter or grandson visits to wave and say hello with a dog they walk, or when my daughter leaves a colorful “I love you” hand-drawn message drawn with many hearts taped to my window. Another cherished view is my husband braving all kinds of weather to put out birdseed, allowing me to enjoy watching my avian neighbors every morning.

I rarely left my house during the two years of our long pandemic. The view from my window, where I spent most of the day, was my connection to the outside world. I am so fortunate that my view encompasses much of nature, where Parker Palmer tells us that the plants photosynthesize our nervous energy into peace, passing all understanding.

Now, I connect to the views from people’s windows all over the world. Consequently, I can begin my day with a broader worldview.

Jan Mauldin’s view from a vacation home in Utah

Lessons from the Harp about Listening

What I Heard About Listening From the Harp

paula volpe

“Be a lamp, a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help someone’s soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.”— Rumi (1207-1273), Daily Quotes, inwardoutward.org.

If I were redesigning a program about spiritual direction, 90% of the time would be dedicated to listening. My experience shows that listening is one of the best tools the Holy Spirit uses within us. I am talking about active listening, where we clear our minds of agendas and what is happening in our lives as much as possible. We offer the gift of time for forty-five minutes or an hour to listen to someone else’s life. During this time, we have the privilege of caring for another’s soul and helping a person recognize God’s never-failing presence in their own life.

I sit, and all these great ideas come to me as I listen. “I think they would like this book. Changing to this spiritual exercise might be helpful.”

I'm learning that when I interrupt with my ideas, they often go unnoticed, but if I wait until there's silence and then speak, the person seems to understand and listen better to what I might suggest. As I wait, I sometimes realize, “No, this was not the right book or spiritual exercise.” 

I've learned a lot about listening from my harp. You might have noticed a loud buzzing sound when some harpists play. Buzz. One reason for the buzz is that we've plucked a string that is still vibrating from a recent finger placement. We have to wait for the string to stop vibrating before playing it again, or this annoying sound will interrupt us.

 My buzzing harp reminds me that I have to wait for the person I’m visiting to stop talking. 

I am learning to play fewer buzzing notes as I talk less and listen more. As a result, my buzzing harp string has become my icon for listening.

Listening can serve as a “lamp, lifeboat, and ladder” to the Holy Spirit’s presence in our lives and those of our spiritual friends.

Joanna  https://www.joannaseibert.com/