Dear Friends,
We hope that you are safe and well!
Today's Meditation is a reflection and poem from Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation entitled "Trauma and Silence." It was sent to us by Tom Laue.
We invite you to join us as we commit ourselves to working tirelessly to end systemic and structural racism in our society, in healthcare, in the workplace, in the Church--wherever it shows up so that everyone may come to have more abundant life. May this meditation nourish our contemplative-active hearts and sustain all of us in action.
In the spirit of our philosophy of co-creating community and our awareness that the Spirit speaks through each of us, we invite you to share your meditations with us as well. We truly believe that in God’s economy of abundance, when we share our blessings, our thoughts, our feelings, we are all made richer.
We hope and pray that you and your loved ones experience genuine peace of mind and heart, and remain in good health during this challenging time.
As Spring comes to birth, may you find peace, healing, hope, and the infusion of joy in your life!
With our love and care,
Ron & Jean
Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
From the Center for Action and Contemplation
Image credit: Belinda Rain, Water Drops On Grass (detail), 1972, photograph, California, National Archives.
Week Eighteen: Trauma and Healing
Trauma and Silence
Today I share a contemplative poem from CAC friend and writer Felicia Murrell. Felicia’s words combine a deep awareness of God’s presence while clearly naming the collective trauma of police brutality and lynchings. It is worth remembering, as Black liberation theologian James Cone (1938–2018) points out, that the lynchings of African Americans and the crucifixion of Jesus share much in common: “Both the cross and the lynching tree were symbols of terror, instruments of torture and execution, reserved primarily for slaves, criminals, and insurrectionists—the lowest of the low in society.” [1] There is something about poetry that gives us permission to sit with the paradoxes of our pain, perhaps especially when addressing traumatic suffering. I invite you to read Felicia's challenging words slowly, allowing your heart to break open to God’s love amidst the suffering of the world.
Silence
If you’re silent,
you can hear the forest breathe,
the holy hush of the tree’s limb.
“Silence,” said Thomas Merton, “is God’s first language”:
the way it soaks into your skin,
surrounds you,
blanketing you like the forest’s breath.
Silence:
The cadence of the land at rest,
the body asleep,
the heart awake.
Silence:
The deep rhythmic breathing of a mind slowed down,
an ocean still,
wet dew clinging to grass blade.
Silence:
The sacred song trapped in a bird’s breast before its first
chirp,
the still of night across a desert landscape
wrapped in a bone-aching chill
before the sun rises to scorch its parched earth.
Silence:
The lusty gaze of onlookers staring at the negro on the
lynching tree,
neck snapped,
life ended,
feet dangling,
back and forth,
back and forth.
Silenced:
Hands up, don’t shoot!
Body thrumming with a heady sense of power.
Hands in pocket,
resting pose, knees embedded into a man’s neck.
Silence, please.
- I. Can’t. Breathe.
Silenced.
[1] James Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree (Orbis Books: 2011), 31.
Felicia Murrell, “Silence,” “Trauma,” Oneing, vol. 9, no. 1 (CAC Publishing: 2021), 19–20
Image credit: Belinda Rain, Water Drops On Grass (detail), 1972, photograph, California, National Archives.
Image inspiration: Even in and around our sharpest edges the water of life gathers. Soothing, nourishing, healing.
Prayer For Our Community
Loving God, you fill all things with a fullness and hope that we can never comprehend. Thank you for leading us into a time where more of reality is being unveiled for us all to see. We pray that you will take away our natural temptation for cynicism, denial, fear and despair. Help us have the courage to awaken to greater truth, greater humility, and greater care for one another. May we place our hope in what matters and what lasts, trusting in your eternal presence and love. Listen to our hearts’ longings for the healing of our suffering world. Please add your own intentions . . . Knowing, good God, you are hearing us better than we are speaking, we offer these prayers in all the holy names of God. Amen.
Story From Our Community
As a prison chaplain, I encouraged people to transform their pain, often caused by trauma in their early years. However, most did not have safety and support for transformation. Now, for the first time in my life, I am experiencing profound and chronic pain. I am not doing a lot of transforming. I am numbing, through ice packs and medication, to ensure that I make it to the transformative work of my surgery. To push my metaphor, I am resisting any impulse to do the surgery on myself. Richard's words encourage me in my new journey with physical pain.
—Glenn M.