What heals us? Do you know? I would guess that most of us have some need of healing -- of a physical ailment, an emotional wound, a spiritual injury. What heals us? The word heal is rela ted to the word whole and healing, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, means to make whole, sound, or well. What makes us whole? What does it mean to make whole? When I speak of healing today I do not mean healing as cure, or healing as “good as new.” I mean, rather, healing as a process that restores us to some measure of peace, balance, harmony. Healing is not one thing, but rather shows itself in many guises: as repair, or reconciliation, or understanding and perspective, or forgiveness, or acceptance, or even compensating for something lost. Healing is an ongoing process because it involves coming to terms with our lives and finding ways to go on in freedom.
There are moments when wellness escapes us, moments when pain and suffering are not dim possibilities but all too agonizing realities. At such moments we must open ourselves to healing. Much we can do for ourselves; and what we can do we must do -- healing, no less than illness, is participatory. But even when we do all we can do there is, often , still much left to be done. And so we turn as well to our healers seeking their skill to aid in our struggle for wellness. But even when they do all they can do there is, often, 0A still much left to be done. And so we turn to Life, To the vast Power of Being that animates the universe as the ocean animates the wave . . .
From a poem by Rabbi Rami Shapiro. What heals us? Our own engagement: with ourselves, with others, with the greater ongoing Life, or20god, or energy, or Higher Power, or laws of nature, or science, or however you name it. Engaging with others. We may not all consider ourselves healers. We may not have a gift for body work, or energy work, or psychological work, or medicine in all its permutations. Nevertheless, we are all healers, potentially. We are all healers when we bear witness to each other’s experience. Bearing witness means to listen without judgment, without advice, without trying to fix anyone or make him/her better. Just to listen. Just to stay and not run away from another’s suffering. Just to say, by our very presence, I see you, I hear your story and I am here. How might I help?
Do you know how hard it is to do that? Do you know how healing it can be when we either give or receive such witness? Has it ever happened to you? When I worked for the Social Security Administration as a manager, I had an opportunity to bear witness to a young man, Tyrone, whose chip on his shoulder had gotten him into deep trouble. He was involved in racial and religious tensions in the unit I supervised and his actions had brought him to the brink of being fired -- not an easy feat for government, or any tenured, employees. Nevertheless, we arrived at the last step and, as the front line supervisor, I had to deliver the news to him. I could see how angry he felt, and I thought, how frustrated and anxious about losing his job. And then he asked something remarkable of me, which was to give him another chance. He said that he hated having a woman for a boss and if I would agree to leave him alone he would show me that he could do the job. He gave me the choice of bearing witness to his reality. A reality I felt uncomfortable with and one that had certainly made his life more difficult. I took a chance and agreed. I left off trying to compel him, to fix him and instead offered him a measure of trust. And he did the job; he became reliable and peaceful. We had some respect for each other and when I left he even gave me a present. I wonder if his attitude about women in aut hority changed as well.
Bernie Glassman, a Zen teacher, reminds us that bearing witness means three things. First, we approach each other with open minds and hearts. We recognize that we really do not know what someone else’s experience is, what he/she should do, should or should not feel, think, say. We really do not know the answers for another person. And we do know that often it does not feel good when someone tries to fix us, or tell us what we should feel or say or do. Remaining in the state of not knowing means we are willing to be surprised; we are willing to learn something. It means we will not let our fears get in the way of listening to each other’s stories. Secondly, bearing witness means being present to the joys and sorrows of life. Not running away. Third, bearing witness means our actions arise out of our not knowing, out of our openness and out of our courage to be present. How can I help? I don’t have the answers for what you should do or be, I trust that you can find those for yourself. I am here, though, and I see you. How can I help? When Tyrone let me see him and I was able to see him with no preconceived plans of action, then I really could help him. We don’t have to fix each other; we can find the strength to remain present with each other and out of this we will know the actions to take. Bearing witness is a way that we help in each other’s healing. Bearing witness.
Let’s sing song #1012, When I Am Frightened, and then let us have some moments of silence. Perhaps you can remember a time when you bore witness, or when someone bore witness to you, and what that felt like. Perhaps you can think of someone you can offer such listening to.
Joys and Sorrows
Healing, part 2
Engaging ourselves. “Healing, no less than illness, is participatory.” (Rami Shapiro) What does it mean to participate in our own healing? Especially healing wounds to the heart and spirit. Again, I do not mean to use healing in a way that indicates a cure or a state of good as new. I do mean healing as finding peace, freedom, harmony, a new balance. Emerging from a cocoon of pain having survived, having learned something, having grown in some way. Participating in our own healing means taking care of ourselves. When the wound is emotional or spiritual, it means grieving whatever happened to us, allowing ourselves to know the loss and to feel it on our path toward an acceptance of change.
Naming the loss a nd feeling it are waters too deep for many of us to enter. Oh, we might allow in our heads that we have been injured, but rather than permit ourselves to experience what that feels like, we try to minimize our emotions, deny our suffering, run away from it, blame someone else, even blame ourselves rather than feel the pain, rather than embrace our helplessness and lack of control over much of what happens to us. We tell ourselves not to wallow, not to get stuck in our feelings, which isn’t bad advice unless it leads us to cut ourselves off from our feelings. When we find ourselves going over the same story again and again, not able to let go of anger, of sadness, of resentment, then chances are we have not really gotten to the bottom of our feelings. Feelings can sometimes act as masks for other, deeper feelings. Anger, for instance, can mask pain or fear. For some of us it’s easier to feel anger than to experience sadness. But if the sadness is there, the anger can cover it up only so far.
When I sense that I’m stuck, that I’m not feeling something that nevertheless is alive in me, it seems as if a large stone lives in my belly. I try to give myself some space, literally and figuratively, and I ask myself for clarity. I ask the feeling to show itself to me. I ask myself why is this important -- that I keep thinking about it; that my eyes well up when I talk about it; that my stomach knots. Why is this important? I’ll come up with an answer and I’ll ask again, why is that important? I’ll keep asking and answering until I know, and one does know, that I’ve gotten to the bottom of things.
Forgiveness matters here. Did you see the movie Ordinary People? It’s about two brothers, teen agers maybe, who go out in a boat and have an accident. One brother dies and the other survives, but blames himself because he couldn’t hold onto his brother’s hand. The family is a mess. The mother has closed herself off in an icy prison, the surviving son is suicidal, the father does not know what to do. As the story unwinds, the characters get to the bottom of their feelings. The son is angry at his brother for letting go of his hand but feels he should not have anger at his dead brother and so turns it onto himself. The mother grieves the son who died, her favorite, and20resents the one who survived, but suspects she should not have those feelings and so closes herself off. The son comes to allow himself to feel and to express his emotions, with the help of a therapist who bears witness, and finds he can forgive both his brother and himself. The mother finally opens her heart and reveals her feelings, only to be judged a monster by her husband, who does not bear witness well, and tells her he doesn’t know if he loves her anymore. Forgiveness matters in healing. In order to heal, we need to experience our feelings, but we also need to recognize and to have people around us who recognize that feelings are not moral indicators of who we are. Our feelings do not make us good or bad people. Our actions, what we do with our feelings, are the indicators of our character. We simply feel what we feel and we human beings have shown ourselves capable of feeling just about anything and everything. Thus in order to experience the emotions of our suffering, we need to be able to forgive ourselves and each other for feelings we might be embarrassed to reveal, or those we deem it “wrong” to have at all.
We participate in our own healing when we allow ourselves to be as we are; to feel what we feel. We participate in each other’s healing when we bear witness to each other’s stories without judgement of emotions. When we can do that, we find that feelings ebb. They are the tidal ocean and we are the sand. They flow over us and they flow away from us. They move us here and there and they change us, but they come and go. We are always more than what we feel at any given moment. With this perspective, we learn that, like the sand, we can survive the changing tides, even the storms. That is healing.
Kahlil Gibran wrote:
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain. And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy; And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields. And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.
Can we have some moments of silence now? Perhaps you will think about the seasons of your being. What in you needs to heal? How can you participate in your own healing?
Offertory and offering
Healing, part 3
Engaging life. Wendell Berry wrote:
When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Have you ever rested in the grace of the world? What was it like? When have you turned to Life, to God, to Higher Power, to Spirit, to nature, to energy, and so forth? When have you received the healing gifts they have for us? Sometimes we find these gifts which some call grace in the natural world; sometimes they appear as beauty; often they dwell in the present moment. I experience peace and healing when I kayak, when I come close to a heron, when I smell the water, feel its coolness on my skin, listen to the quiet. Being in the larger life, feeling a part of things, floating, drifting, offers me restoration. It centers me and calls me back, to be where I am.
I can experience such a sense of wholeness in an art museum. When I visited the Louvre, I had forgotten that the Nike of Samothrace (Winged Victory), a Greek statue of a woman alighting on the prow of a ship, signaling victory, lived there. I climbed a staircase and there she was, at the top. My heart beat faster, absolutely thrilled with the living beauty. I just sat there beside her for a long time, whole. Why is that, do you think? Maybe other beings seem to engage life differently than we do? They just seem to be. Maybe the cycles of nature, always changing within a pattern identifiable, ground us and hold us in this life? Maybe the great beauty of the world and of art calms us.
Let’s sing song #1064 Blue Boat Home, again to be followed with some moments of silence.
Closing words: A metta prayer for our congregation Healing is participatory. We engage with ourselves; we engage with each other; we engage with Life. May you in this congregation find the peace of healing. May you seek to understand and hold each other with compassion. May you pay attention. May you be safe. May those outside this congregation find the freedom of healing. May they seek to understand and hold each other with compassion. May they pay attention. May they be safe. May we in or not in this congregation find the wholeness of healing. May we seek to understand and hold each other with compassion. May we pay attention. May we be restored to harmony.
May it be so.