Transforming spaces

Last week I had the joy of celebrating the completion of a certificate program sponsored by Johnson C. Smith Theological Seminary. For the past 6 months we engaged in learning history that none of us were taught in school and weeded our way through theologies to rediscover the God who heals and repairs.  Each week we spent time with great intention listening to one another’s experiences. This is easily among my top 5 transforming life experiences.
During our celebration, we shared how this experience shaped our capacity and purpose for engaging healing and repair…

The shaping I take from this program blends with what I brought into it, my nursing history in healing chronic wounds. The cause of a wound must be investigated and understood in order to create an environment for healing to occur. Wounds don’t heal successfully without addressing their cause or noticing if the treatment being used only brings continued insult (i.e. hydrogen peroxide is useful to clean a wound, but used long term delays and impairs healing). A healing environment concerns both local care and systemic needs. In other words, what feeds and sustains the body is as important as the local attention. 

Through my lens for healing, the Drum Major for Justice program specifically called me to examine the biological history of our system. The program did not tell me how to create a constructive theology of healing and repair – telling is akin to lectures and lessons that inform the mind. For me, the program itself embodied the theology of healing and repair, reinforcing what was already familiar to me.  Healing requires examining wounds, systemically investigating their causes, and discovering the insult that perpetuates them. Looking into our ‘medical’ history, required courage to both expose and observe deep wounds, to purge toxins, and bear witness to pain. Such healing spaces are raw and sacred but they foster the environment to allow new tissues to form toward more healthy quality of life. 

It is this environment itself that I carry forward in my theology of healing and repair. To create “wound healing clinics” – safe spaces for honest examination of cause and continuing insult on our communal wounds; safe spaces to purge the toxins, to be held amid the pain, and work together more fully informed on a journey of healing. A journey toward growing the Beloved Community on earth as it is in heaven.

in this together…