healing through wounds...

Lately, life has taught me that we are a wounded people and no one gets exemption. Some wounds appear more severe than others and perhaps some require extra care to heal, but nobody weasles their way out of this basic human crappiness that is our condition of woundedness.
An abusive family member, fundamentalist religion, soured relationships, bad coaches or teachers, we’ve all been beaten up by something and the majority of these beatings leave a wake that lingers whether we allow ourselves to be cognizant or not. And we respond creatively to liberate ourselves from life’s varied monsters. Some of these responses involve clever illusions and other fascinating forms of covering wounds in order to make a reasonably content way with life.

I’m learning that moving people to participate in God’s redemptive mission doesn’t get too far until you confront, care for, and help people live through their woundedness. I’m learning that another way Jesus expressed the idea of woundedness was through his teaching on poverty. Jesus’ invitation to poverty (which I’m beginning to think is the central message of the Sermon on the Mount) is an invitation to a deep realization of our own limitedness and weakness. And, obviously, I can’t lead people to far into places of healing until I recognize the necessity to open up as a fellow human being with the same wounds and sufferings as the ones I serve. I’m not sure I’ve had to many pastors model this for me. I’m not sure I was ever warned about this aspect of pastoral service by seminary profs.
But a life of service and transformation will be a life marked by naked exposure of wounds. Jesus took the risk to model this way of poverty. He seemed to understand that healing others could only happen through his own wounds.

Our issue according to Rohr is...

The problem begins when we face an inner compulsion always to be the ones who are right. If we’re too taken up with this question, then we’re continually absorbed with our self-image, and such people we’re precisely the ones who killed Jesus.

...I too hope, of course, that I’m acting correctly, but I can’t continually circle around this question. The problem is precisely in the need to be right and the need to think of myself as right. That is the problem for the soul. I have to do my work and leave the judgment to God. I need to avoid the compulsion to be constantly passing judgment, because those constantly passing judgment are not in a position to honestly perceive their own reality.

From "Simplicity" p. 78 & 79.

This is the tension, when the illusion of control (one of the ways we cover the wounds) seems to be slipping from our tight grasp and the desire to cling, judge, power-up, or simply leave rears its head. God asks, like he seems to ask through the “Do not worry” command of Matthew 6: 25:34, “Can you trust me? To all those poverty stricken folks like me, seeking to join Jesus on his mission, the Wounded Healer as Nouwen calls him, continues to ask, “Can you trust me?”

Comments

[jason smith]

awesome.

[becky]

Hurt people hurt people and the more I see all people as hurt ...it seems to open me up to being hurt....

[andrea]

water for my thirst.