“Healing”

            I have been reflecting on how much healing is part of the transformation we speak of as our church’s mission. In the Gospels, it is remarkable that the most persistent people who approach Jesus are in need of healing for themselves or their loved ones. This makes sense. Once we become aware of hurt of any kind – physical, emotional, and spiritual – we are compelled to want to do something to alleviate it. This impulse is a marker of our humanity.

            We are understanding now how deep our wounds are as a people. It is difficult to stay present for it, it is so overwhelming and relentless: racist acts of police and judicial violence, violent language spoken from the mouths and phones of our citizens and leaders, a violent disregard of those living under financial constraints through the delay of further economic stimulus, an earth that is literally burning leading to evacuation and uncertainty. There are so many painful things happening, that sometimes I find it empowering to list them, to name them. In putting language to the hurt, it doesn’t minimize it, but it gives us a way of looking, talking, and acting toward healing.

            I think healing fundamentally has to do with wholeness – not being threatened by difference and discohesion, but learning how to integrate disparate parts into a whole. Fragmentation and division seem not to resolve wounding in the long run. In the short term, it may be necessary for survival, especially for those on the margins. But in the long run, we are always left with the wounded parts of ourselves.

            This is one view that, though difficult to practice, may be liberating: all that we witness are aspects of ourselves. I don’t mean this in the mundane, literal sense. I mean that just as our arms work together with our legs though they have different strengths and functions, we as a people are a body politic. When one part of the body is ill or needs care and assistance, the rest of the body works as a whole to mend that part. We don’t abandon a broken leg because the arm is fine. This view of wholeness can give us a broader view of our life, and of the events we are witnessing. We are parts of our own body in dire need and distress.

            There is so much distress happening all at once that it can seem overwhelming who to tend to, and what to do. The answer always begins with ourselves – tending to ourselves, and noticing where we are. From there we are much more able to clearly see what we can offer in a given moment. Our actions in the moment may not on the surface seem to mean much in rectifying centuries of wounding, but we should be willing to be surprised. The results ultimately are not in our complete control. We may be surprised about how just listening to someone’s story, really listening, can change that person’s life. And that changed person may be an agent of change in their workplace, with their family, in their neighborhood, in their nation and world. We should never underestimate the power of kindness.

            Kindness is the path of healing. That is the path we hold as our intention and practice at UUYO: kindness, seeing and feeling how we are more alike than we think, and how our differences are strengths. This is a path that continues to ground me during this time as our nation prepares for the presidential election, and so much in our country feels unknown and dire. Kindness is the light, the candle that shows the way forward one breath at a time. I know healing is real. I also know wounding is real and persistent. Do not be discouraged by the depth and breadth of this wounding. There are opportunities for understanding and appropriate action, if we learn to practice by tending to and identifying our own wounding, and from that place be kind to ourselves. In being kind to ourselves where we are, we learn to be kind to a world, as it is.