Wounded Healers<\/p>\n\n\n\n
God\nUses Everything<\/strong>\nMonday, \u202fSeptember 14,\n2020\nFeast of the Triumph of the\nCross<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n<\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p>The genius of Jesus\u2019 ministry is that he embraces\ntragedy, suffering, pain, betrayal, and death itself to bring us to\nGod. There are no dead ends. Everything can be transmuted, and everything can\nbe used. Everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\nseems that everybody wants to take easy sides. It\u2019s so consoling for the ego to\nhave an answer; to be sure that my position is the final and only true answer.\nYet, as Paul says, on the cross Jesus becomes the sin and the problem. He\nidentifies with the wound, the pain, and the suffering (2 Corinthians 5:21). He\ndoes not stand apart from it but enters into it. What a paradox, what a\nmystery!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jesus\ntells Peter, \u201cPeter, you must be sifted like wheat. And once you have\nrecovered, then you, in your turn, can strengthen your companions\u201d (Luke\n22:31\u201332). Until there has been a journey through suffering, I don\u2019t believe\nthat we have true healing authority. We don\u2019t have the ability to lead anybody\nanyplace new unless we have walked it ourselves to some degree. In general, we\ncan only lead people on the spiritual journey as far as we ourselves have gone.\nWe simply can\u2019t talk about it beyond that. That\u2019s why the best thing we can do\nfor people is to stay on the journey ourselves. We transform people to the\ndegree we have been transformed. When we can somehow <em>be<\/em> compassion, not\njust talk about compassion; when we can be healed and not just talk about\nhealing, then we are, as Henri Nouwen said so well, \u201cwounded healers,\u201d but not\nbefore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\nalways comes through the wounding. What we do when faced with our deepest\nwounds determines whether there is authentic spirituality at work or not. If we\nseek to blame other people, accuse, attack, or even explain and make perfect,\nlogical sense out of our wounds, there will be no further spiritual journey.\nBut if, when the wounding happens, we find the grace and the freedom to somehow\nsee that it\u2019s not just a wound, but a <em>sacred\nwound<\/em>, then the\njourney progresses. Then we set out to find ourselves, to find the truth, and\nto find God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s all about\nwhat each of us does with the wound. If we ourselves have never walked through\nsome kind of suffering, whether betrayal, abandonment, rejection, divorce, loss\nof job, struggles with sexuality, we probably will give people \u201chead\u201d answers.\nWe don\u2019t touch or heal their hearts because our own have not been transformed.\nI don\u2019t think it\u2019s any accident that in most of Jesus\u2019 healings, he physically\ntouches people. He\u2019s showing that healing cannot be done through the head, through\nexplanations, theories and theologies, or quick, \u201clogical\u201d conclusions. It must\nsomehow be a communication of life and love energy, held even at the cellular\nlevel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Wounded Healers<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Our\nSacred Wounds<\/strong><br>\nSunday, \u202fSeptember 13,\n2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Ministry\ncan indeed be a witness to the living truth that the wound, which causes us to\nsuffer now, will be revealed to us later as the place where God intimated\n[God\u2019s] new creation<\/em>. \u2014Henri J. M. Nouwen (1932\u20131996)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Christianity,\nin its mature forms, keeps pushing us toward the necessary tragic: \u201cthe\nfoolishness of the cross,\u201d as Paul calls it (1 Corinthians 1:18). Normally, the\nway God pushes us is by disillusioning us with the present mode. Until the\npresent falls apart, we will never look for something more. We will never\ndiscover what it is that really sustains us. That dreaded falling-apart\nexperience is always suffering in some form. All of us hate suffering, yet all\nreligions talk about it as necessary. It seems to be the price we pay for the\ndeath of the small self and the emergence of the True Self\u2014when we finally come\nto terms with our true identity in God. Many Jungians describe this in\npsychological terms as the \u201cnecessary soul suffering\u201d that comes from the death\nof the ego. Jesus would say, \u201cUnless the grain of wheat dies, it remains just a\ngrain of wheat\u201d (John 12:24). By avoiding this legitimate pain of being human,\nwe sadly bring on ourselves much longer lasting and, often, fruitless pain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In\nthe work I have done with men\u2019s spirituality, we call that suffering in its\ntransformed state \u201cthe sacred wound.\u201d The sacred wound is a concept drawn from\nclassical mythology, but also from the Christ story. In mythology, the would-be\nhero is always wounded. The word <em>innocent<\/em> (<em>innocens<\/em>, \u201cnot yet wounded\u201d) is not\na complimentary term in mythology. The <em>puer<\/em> is the young boy (<em>puella<\/em> for the young\ngirl) who refuses to be wounded. More precisely, he refuses to recognize and\nsuffer the wounds that are already there. He\u2019s just going to remain nice and\nnormal so everybody will accept him. In our culture, he might smugly remain\nwhite and middle class, healthy, \u201csinless,\u201d Catholic, good-looking, and happy.\nMaybe he will drive a fancy car or wear the latest clothing. He refuses to let\nthings fall apart. He refuses to be wounded, much less to allow the humiliating\nwound to become sacred and sanctifying. Yet, I personally believe that the\nGospels are saying there is no other way to know something essential. Allowing\nour always-unjust wounds to, in fact, become sacred wounds is the unique\nChristian name for salvation. <em>We always learn\nour mystery at the price of our innocence.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We must trust\nthe pain and not get rid of it until we have learned its lessons. The suffering\ncan be seen as a part of the great pattern of how God is transforming all\nthings. If there is one consistent and clear revelation in the Bible, it is\nthat the God of Israel is the one who <em>turns\ndeath into life<\/em> (see Isaiah 26:19; Romans 4:17; 2 Corinthians\n1:9). When we can trust the transformative pattern, and that God is <em>in the suffering<\/em>, our wounds become sacred wounds. The actual and\nordinary life journey becomes itself the godly journey. We trust God to be in\nall things, even in sin and suffering.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wounded Healers God Uses Everything Monday, \u202fSeptember 14, 2020 Feast of the Triumph of the Cross The genius of Jesus\u2019 ministry is that he embraces tragedy, suffering, pain, betrayal, and death itself to bring us to God. There are no dead ends. Everything can be transmuted, and everything can be used. Everything. It seems that everybody […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19312"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19312"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19313,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19312\/revisions\/19313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
<\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p>The genius of Jesus\u2019 ministry is that he embraces\ntragedy, suffering, pain, betrayal, and death itself to bring us to\nGod. There are no dead ends. Everything can be transmuted, and everything can\nbe used. Everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\nseems that everybody wants to take easy sides. It\u2019s so consoling for the ego to\nhave an answer; to be sure that my position is the final and only true answer.\nYet, as Paul says, on the cross Jesus becomes the sin and the problem. He\nidentifies with the wound, the pain, and the suffering (2 Corinthians 5:21). He\ndoes not stand apart from it but enters into it. What a paradox, what a\nmystery!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jesus\ntells Peter, \u201cPeter, you must be sifted like wheat. And once you have\nrecovered, then you, in your turn, can strengthen your companions\u201d (Luke\n22:31\u201332). Until there has been a journey through suffering, I don\u2019t believe\nthat we have true healing authority. We don\u2019t have the ability to lead anybody\nanyplace new unless we have walked it ourselves to some degree. In general, we\ncan only lead people on the spiritual journey as far as we ourselves have gone.\nWe simply can\u2019t talk about it beyond that. That\u2019s why the best thing we can do\nfor people is to stay on the journey ourselves. We transform people to the\ndegree we have been transformed. When we can somehow <em>be<\/em> compassion, not\njust talk about compassion; when we can be healed and not just talk about\nhealing, then we are, as Henri Nouwen said so well, \u201cwounded healers,\u201d but not\nbefore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\nalways comes through the wounding. What we do when faced with our deepest\nwounds determines whether there is authentic spirituality at work or not. If we\nseek to blame other people, accuse, attack, or even explain and make perfect,\nlogical sense out of our wounds, there will be no further spiritual journey.\nBut if, when the wounding happens, we find the grace and the freedom to somehow\nsee that it\u2019s not just a wound, but a <em>sacred\nwound<\/em>, then the\njourney progresses. Then we set out to find ourselves, to find the truth, and\nto find God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s all about\nwhat each of us does with the wound. If we ourselves have never walked through\nsome kind of suffering, whether betrayal, abandonment, rejection, divorce, loss\nof job, struggles with sexuality, we probably will give people \u201chead\u201d answers.\nWe don\u2019t touch or heal their hearts because our own have not been transformed.\nI don\u2019t think it\u2019s any accident that in most of Jesus\u2019 healings, he physically\ntouches people. He\u2019s showing that healing cannot be done through the head, through\nexplanations, theories and theologies, or quick, \u201clogical\u201d conclusions. It must\nsomehow be a communication of life and love energy, held even at the cellular\nlevel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Wounded Healers<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Our\nSacred Wounds<\/strong><br>\nSunday, \u202fSeptember 13,\n2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Ministry\ncan indeed be a witness to the living truth that the wound, which causes us to\nsuffer now, will be revealed to us later as the place where God intimated\n[God\u2019s] new creation<\/em>. \u2014Henri J. M. Nouwen (1932\u20131996)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Christianity,\nin its mature forms, keeps pushing us toward the necessary tragic: \u201cthe\nfoolishness of the cross,\u201d as Paul calls it (1 Corinthians 1:18). Normally, the\nway God pushes us is by disillusioning us with the present mode. Until the\npresent falls apart, we will never look for something more. We will never\ndiscover what it is that really sustains us. That dreaded falling-apart\nexperience is always suffering in some form. All of us hate suffering, yet all\nreligions talk about it as necessary. It seems to be the price we pay for the\ndeath of the small self and the emergence of the True Self\u2014when we finally come\nto terms with our true identity in God. Many Jungians describe this in\npsychological terms as the \u201cnecessary soul suffering\u201d that comes from the death\nof the ego. Jesus would say, \u201cUnless the grain of wheat dies, it remains just a\ngrain of wheat\u201d (John 12:24). By avoiding this legitimate pain of being human,\nwe sadly bring on ourselves much longer lasting and, often, fruitless pain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In\nthe work I have done with men\u2019s spirituality, we call that suffering in its\ntransformed state \u201cthe sacred wound.\u201d The sacred wound is a concept drawn from\nclassical mythology, but also from the Christ story. In mythology, the would-be\nhero is always wounded. The word <em>innocent<\/em> (<em>innocens<\/em>, \u201cnot yet wounded\u201d) is not\na complimentary term in mythology. The <em>puer<\/em> is the young boy (<em>puella<\/em> for the young\ngirl) who refuses to be wounded. More precisely, he refuses to recognize and\nsuffer the wounds that are already there. He\u2019s just going to remain nice and\nnormal so everybody will accept him. In our culture, he might smugly remain\nwhite and middle class, healthy, \u201csinless,\u201d Catholic, good-looking, and happy.\nMaybe he will drive a fancy car or wear the latest clothing. He refuses to let\nthings fall apart. He refuses to be wounded, much less to allow the humiliating\nwound to become sacred and sanctifying. Yet, I personally believe that the\nGospels are saying there is no other way to know something essential. Allowing\nour always-unjust wounds to, in fact, become sacred wounds is the unique\nChristian name for salvation. <em>We always learn\nour mystery at the price of our innocence.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We must trust\nthe pain and not get rid of it until we have learned its lessons. The suffering\ncan be seen as a part of the great pattern of how God is transforming all\nthings. If there is one consistent and clear revelation in the Bible, it is\nthat the God of Israel is the one who <em>turns\ndeath into life<\/em> (see Isaiah 26:19; Romans 4:17; 2 Corinthians\n1:9). When we can trust the transformative pattern, and that God is <em>in the suffering<\/em>, our wounds become sacred wounds. The actual and\nordinary life journey becomes itself the godly journey. We trust God to be in\nall things, even in sin and suffering.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wounded Healers God Uses Everything Monday, \u202fSeptember 14, 2020 Feast of the Triumph of the Cross The genius of Jesus\u2019 ministry is that he embraces tragedy, suffering, pain, betrayal, and death itself to bring us to God. There are no dead ends. Everything can be transmuted, and everything can be used. Everything. It seems that everybody […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19312"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19312"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19313,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19312\/revisions\/19313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}