[With deep appreciation to Clarissa Pinkola Estes, my teacher.]
Do you have friends who have betrayed you? Or angered you? Misled you or done something that pained you deeply? Perhaps I should have prefaced that with “If you are a person of faith, one of a deeply rooted historical tradition, do you have friends who have wounded you in some fashion?” I invite you to reflect on it a little. Really think of those who are closest to you, those you consider friends. Strangely, the answer I wish for you is “Yes, I do. Yes, those closest in my life have wounded me in some fashion.” Some masochistic notion here? Not at all. The wounding is not the point, nor do I wish such things on any sentient being. Painful. Destructive of trust and faith. At least at first, if one is fortunate. The point here, of awareness and of interest, is observing the relationship beyond the wound, the potential transformation that comes in multiple lives because of the wound.
Christian theological education these last decades has attempted to maximize on a notion of “the wounded healer.” Henri Nouwen is the name usually associated with it, as he wrote a short book with that title. I like Henri Nouwen. Respect his path of discipleship, the costs with which he walked his tradition. The notion of “wounded healers” has done great damage to our understanding of religious leadership, however. I hate the notion of “wounded healers.” The phrase draws our focus to the wound, for one thing. Churches are full today of those who are wounded but refuse the work of right medicine and healing that produce scars and strength. I was startled recently into an awareness that as a church leader, I'm simply not accustomed to being around strong people, those who are confident in their being and steward their own growth, healing. The phrase also places "healing" as a thing leaders do for others, not what life-giving relationship creates for us all. We focus on the wound or the healer, in other words, not the transformation or the relationship that survives the wound to teach us all something deeper.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés speaks of wounds at some length in some of her spoken work, Theatre of the Imagination, concluding with a chant of invitation to holy life, to transformative encounter with God. The etymological roots of “wound” connect with a “wonder,” a great “wonder” of the world, of an age, of life. She mentions the Pyramids. The Seven Wonders of the World. A wound in this sense speaks of a separation, a place where light comes in anew. Perhaps with great pain. Perhaps unintentionally. But a new opening, hole, door where light had not shone before. There’s nothing special about the wound itself, only the light that comes into it.
Wounds, she notes, also require cleansing. If one is to heal what has torn open, it must be cleansed with the right medicine. Also painful. But then healing. Then a scar. And scar tissue is many times stronger than skin that has never been wounded. One of the lines in her closing chant, “Abre la Puerta,” “Open the Door,” says it well: “All strong souls must first go to hell before they do the healing work they came here for.” Wounds healed with the right medicine make souls strong. They create the souls able to do healing work in the world. But then she moves to the point, to the path beyond any wound or any healing.
All this, any felt wounding, is a door. It is an opening to awaken to all that is holy, to all that connects us, to interdependence known in one’s bones. I think this is the most difficult and most liberating way to being fully human, to allow suffering or whatever wound we have sustained in our most vulnerable places to be a door to sacred consciousness, to awakening, to awareness. To see a Life that connects us in ways we could never have known except for knowing separation, cleansing, union. Nope, we lament the wound. We look for someone, a healer, to ease the pain. We forget we have been given resources of life-giving relationship with others that releases, unlocks, for our own healing, our own awakening.
Why? I have no idea. Perhaps it’s not like that in your experience, and perhaps even the notions here will be misunderstood and bastardized into something ugly. Most folks I know who parlay in religious life today bump up against different-others and sense a wounding, feel a pain of separation or difference. Then they leave the church, choosing instead to go to one that is more comfortable, that doesn't hurt them. Until it happens again. One couple in a small town I know was vehemently against the notion of the two mainline churches merging into one, for the good of both. I do not know for sure, but I do suspect a major reason was because they bounced back and forth between the two distinct churches, whenever they had an argument or disagreement with the pastor of one of them. If the churches merged, how would they escape discomfort? But then what they miss! Without the discomfort, without the wounding, there's no way to truly know the love that's stronger and deeper than all that. Loving deeply means walking through suffering...as a door.
This is not to say discomfort or suffering is good, again, it's just unavoidable. (Thanks to the Buddhists again). Those who live in relationship with others who have wounded them in some fashion, who have found a life-giving way to sustain connection with them, know and manifest a Life that’s deeper than the wound, deeper than the inhuman ways we can be with one another. Those who remain friends with others who have pained them in some way know a freedom and acceptance in a living relationship with a force of its own. When someone makes a mistake, does something he will regret later, he knows that both are yet committed to a shared Life bigger than either of them.
So I’m beginning to look for truly religious folks, by which I mean all those who have been wounded and have remained in a relationship of life-giving power and contribution with those who have wounded them. Religion is not usually defined in this way, true. And there are so many of us who remain in relationships that wound, not manifesting anything life-giving at all but out of fear of loss, grief, and more. But deeply rooted religious practitioners know this truth about life-giving relationship and contribution to the world around them.
Truly religious people know what some call the first noble truth of suffering. They know they will encounter woundedness in themselves and in others…and they gently smile in its face. They are the ones who practice bringing light to the wounds, placing the right medicine at the right times, living through wounds as doors to sacred consciousness, awakening. They stand strong against despair and hopelessness that can seep into wounds or rage in fevers. These wise ones guide our paths to practice living a path of interconnection with all that is larger and livelier than any specific wounding could ever be.If you are one of the lucky ones, you have friends who have wounded you in some way. Or perhaps better to say, those who have wounded you have become friends. I wonder if that's what Jesus meant when he said, "Love your enemies..." Wounds, cleansed and healed rightly, with just the right medicine and internal sustenance, temper love deeper than knowledge or desire. Wounds can grow us into lovers of God, friends of God, divine lovers of all.
Nothing more difficult. Hard work. But good work, if you can get it.
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