Dear Saints in Santa Fe and other far-off places,
Greetings in the name of Jesus Christ, who held the world’s trauma in his arms.
I spent six hours with trauma the day of the eclipse a few Saturdays ago, and three hours the night before.
It was the first class of the “Trauma and Spiritual Care” course I am taking through July 2024 with San Francisco Theological Seminary, and when I pressed “leave” on my computer I felt exhausted and a bit depressed. A dullness came over my spirit. The darkening of the eclipse mirrored that of my soul.
If just talking about trauma left me feeling this way, how do people across the world cope with war, violence, homelessness, hunger, feeling unloved, being abused, dealing with a life-threatening illness, caring for a hurting child? What is it like to live in Gaza and Ukraine right now? How do people cope? No, I really mean it. How in the world, in this world, does one cope?
That’s why I am taking the class. To see what I can do as a person, a pastor, an advocate for gun violence prevention, a survivor of two cancers, a giver of sermons, a student of scripture, one who listens to people and often hears trauma beneath their words.
How might this course help address our own traumas that wake us up at night, mine and yours, and sabotage us without warning with a strength that grips us and won’t let go? And what part does trauma play in organizations? What part does it play in churches in worship and meetings and conversations and still lives in the walls from traumas past? I want to know.
So, I have been reading books with titles like The Body Keeps the Score, The Boy who was Raised as a Dog, The Body is Not an Apology, Hope in Pastoral Care and Counseling, Trauma and Recovery, The Racial Contract, and In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts.
These keep me awake at night, but might they also awaken me to the trauma all around us and inside of me, and you, and that which is told in Scripture. Trauma is everywhere in those pages, in the lives of the prophets and the scoundrels, the empires and the poor, and behind the violence and the wars.
On November 12th and 19th, I will look closely at Exodus 2, the story of Moses’ birth, a story (oddly not in the lectionary) filled with trauma in every scene and character. Moses grew up to lead the people to freedom but was never far from the trauma of this chapter in his life.
As we try to navigate the wars in Gaza and Ukraine (pushed now to the back pages) and witness a world on fire, may we remember a God who still loves all the children and cries at the death of each one, and whose arms hold the grieving and the dying and the traumatized . . . while we all decide whether killing is redemptive or simply piles on to the trauma the world knows so well.
May peace and grace and healing begin to prevail, with God’s help and our own.
Harry