Healing the Wounds

My friend posted the following on Facebook yesterday: “January was a tough year but we made it.” I know it was a very busy and exhausting month for me, and it’s heartbreaking to see what is happening to our country. I honestly don’t want to expend energy debating politics anymore. I just want to focus on helping those who are hurting in real, tangible ways, especially our immigrant and transgender neighbors. Our faith community had a great brainstorming session last week about how to put our love in action this year. So today’s article is focused on healing the wounds of people and our nation, with wise and impactful messages from some clergy and songwriters.

“Let us not mistake emotional distance for spiritual maturity. The way of Jesus is the way of deep empathy, solidarity with the oppressed, and liberating love that transforms both oppressed and oppressor. Through divine empathy, we participate in God's ongoing work of liberation and healing.” — Rev. Dr. Mark Sandlin

Shane Claiborne wrote: “MAGA’s version of Christianity doesn’t look or sound like the Jesus of the Gospels — who blessed the poor and the peacemakers, the meek and the merciful, who insisted we love our enemies and turn the other cheek, who commanded his disciples to sell their possessions and give the money to the poor. And, yes, who said that when we welcome the stranger, we welcome him because whatever we do to the “least of these” we do to Christ. That’s the Gospel of Jesus … and it looks very different from the gospel of Trump. And it is the Gospel of Jesus, not Trump, that Bishop Budde so powerfully preached this week. Whether they admit it or not, it was Jesus, not an Episcopal Bishop, who offended them. It should be said that anyone who was offended by Bishop Budde’s two-minute homily will be even more offended by Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.” Read the rest of his article here.

Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde actually spoke beautifully and bravely for 15 minutes at the national prayer service last week. I strongly recommend reading her sermon here or watching it on Youtube but here are some of her key points:

“Joined by many across the country, we have gathered this morning to pray for unity as a nation – not for agreement, political or otherwise, but for the kind of unity that fosters community across diversity and division, a unity that serves the common good….unity is a way of being with one another that encompasses and respects differences, that teaches us to hold multiple perspectives and life experiences as valid and worthy of respect; that enables us, in our communities and in the halls of power, to genuinely care for one another even when we disagree….Jesus of Nazareth, in his Sermon on the Mount, exhorts us to love not only our neighbors, but to love our enemies, and to pray for those who persecute us; to be merciful, as our God is merciful, and to forgive others, as God forgives us. Jesus went out of his way to welcome those whom his society deemed as outcasts.”

She continued: “there isn’t much to be gained by our prayers if we act in ways that further deepen and exploit the divisions among us. Our Scriptures are quite clear that God is never impressed with prayers when actions are not informed by them. Nor does God spare us from the consequences of our deeds, which, in the end, matter more than the words we pray….the culture of contempt that has become normalized in our country threatens to destroy us…Contempt fuels our political campaigns and social media, and many profit from it. But it’s a dangerous way to lead a country.”

Bishop Budde outlined three of the foundations of unity: 1) “honoring the inherent dignity of every human being…as children of the One God.” 2) “honesty in both private conversation and public discourse” and 3) “humility, which we all need, because we are all fallible human beings. We make mistakes. We say and do things that we regret. We have our blind spots and biases, and we are perhaps the most dangerous to ourselves and others when we are persuaded, without a doubt, that we are absolutely right and someone else is absolutely wrong. Because then we are just a few steps away from labeling ourselves as the good people, versus the bad people. The truth is that we are all people, capable of both good and bad.”

She concluded with a plea to our president “to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now” and a prayer: “May God grant us all the strength and courage to honor the dignity of every human being, speak the truth in love, and walk humbly with one another and our God, for the good of all the people of this nation and the world.”

Shiloh by Audrey Assad

Deep down your eyes look
Haunted by grey ghosts
You live in your stories
Hunted by shadows
When pain comes to show you
What you'd rather not know
What will your heart do?
What will you let go?

May loving kindness
Calm the raging of the wound
May your healing
Be a clearing in the wood
May you breathe in
Deeper than you ever could before

See what you've lived through
So you can grieve it (you can let it go, you can let it go)
And draw it towards you
Catch and release it (you can let it go, you can let it go)
And now as your tears flow
Let them be cleansing (you can lеt it go, you can let it go)
Washing your heart so
You can be mеnding (you can let it go, you can let it go)

May loving kindness
Calm the raging of the wound
May your healing
Be a clearing in the wood
May you breathe in
Deeper than you ever could before

In every season
For every seed there's a time to grow
A time to grow through yesterday's curtains
Maybe you'll open a window, a window
So everything broken
Everything bleeding
Can be made whole
Can be made whole
Where everything shattered
Baby, you'll find your Shiloh
Your Shiloh


May loving kindness
Calm the raging of the wound
And may your healing
Be a clearing in the wood
May you breathe in
Deeper than you ever could before

May we work together in unity to heal our hearts, our nation, and to bind the wounds of those who are hurting and scared right now. And maybe someday soon(I know I’m a dreamer) when everything broken has been made whole, we can say we are “grateful for all the pain” because we are “a little bit hurt but a lot more free.” Be brave and be kind, because we are all children of God.