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Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
From the Center for Action and Contemplation
Week Thirty-seven
Wounded Healers
Healing Is a Process
Thursday, September 17, 2020
I have been recently introduced to the work of Lama Rod Owens, a Black, queer, American-born, Tibetan Buddhist teacher, who was raised in the Christian church and graduated from Harvard Divinity School. Perhaps it is because of his many identities that his teachings on love, self-compassion, and justice seem to be drawn from the perennial wisdom of Reality itself. He writes here of the needed work of healing our own wounds so that the healing can be passed on:
Healing is being situated in love. Healing is not just the courage to love, but to be loved. It is the courage to want to be happy not just for others, but for ourselves as well. It is interrogating our bodies as an artifact of accumulated traumas and doing the work of processing that trauma by developing the capacity to notice and be with our pain. If we are to heal, then we must allow our awareness to settle into and integrate with the pain and discomfort that has been habitually avoided. We cannot medicate the pain away. We embrace it, and in so doing establish a new relationship with the experience. We must see that there is something that must be befriended. This is the true nature of our experience, and in finally approaching this experience we contact basic sanity. . . .
Healing is movement and work toward wholeness. Healing is never a definite location but something in process. It is the basic ordinary work of staying engaged with our own hurt and limitations. Healing does not mean forgiveness either, though it is a result of it. Healing is knowing our woundedness; it is developing an intimacy with the ways in which we suffer. Healing is learning to love the wound because love draws us into relationship with it instead of avoiding feeling the discomfort.
Healing means we are holding the space for our woundedness and allowing it to open our hearts to the reality that we are not the only people who are hurt, lonely, angry, or frustrated. We must also release the habitual aggression that characterizes our avoidance of trauma or any discomfort. My goal is to befriend my pain, to relate to it intimately as a means to end the suffering of desperately trying to avoid it. Opening our hearts to woundedness helps us to understand that everyone else around us carries around the same woundedness. . . .
Perhaps what I have come to understand, finally, is that somehow I have become the one I have always wanted. This is why I do the things that I do. There is a fierce love that wakes me up every morning, that makes me tell my stories, refuses to let me apologize for my being here, blesses me with the capacity to be silent, alone, and grieving when I most need to be. You have to understand that this is what I mean when I say healing.
May all beings be seen, held kindly, and loved. May we all one day surrender to the weight of being healed.
Gateway to Action & Contemplation:
What word or phrase resonates with or challenges me? What sensations do I notice in my body? What is mine to do?
Prayer for Our Community:
O Great Love, thank you for living and loving in us and through us. May all that we do flow from our deep connection with you and all beings. Help us become a community that vulnerably shares each other’s burdens and the weight of glory. Listen to our hearts’ longings for the healing of our world. [Please add your own intentions.] . . . Knowing you are hearing us better than we are speaking, we offer these prayers in all the holy names of God, amen.
Listen to Fr. Richard read the prayer.
Story from Our Community:
My life went from forty-seven years of striving for constant perfection to crashing in the very setting that I thought defined me: on a stage, giving a presentation to hundreds of people. For decades, presenting and "putting on a show" was where I found my identity. Until that foundation was so unexpectedly and brilliantly pulled right out from under my feet. It began a two-year descent into deep depression and physical illness. It was the beginning of disorder. With the help of these daily emails, there has been a true seeing of this [separate, false] self that was created, and is now being seen for the illusion it is. [These daily meditations] have quite literally changed my life. —Missy M.
Lama Rod Owens, “Remembering Love: An Informal Contemplation of Healing,” in Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love, and Liberation, Rev. angel Kyodo williams, Lama Rod Owens with Jasmine Syedullah, PhD (North Atlantic Books: 2016), 64–65, 67–68, 74.
Image credit: Resurrection of Lazarus (detail), circa 12th‒13th century, Athens.
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News from the CAC
Applications for the Living School for Action and Contemplation extended!
Are you ready to come alive in service of the world? The Living School is an immersive experience, going deep to the roots of faith to nurture a generative and compassionate life. Our faculty—Cynthia Bourgeault, James Finley, Barbara Holmes, and Richard Rohr—guide students through a formation experience rooted in a Christian lineage of contemplative practice, rigorous study, and meaningful engagement. The two-year program includes online course work and four gatherings in New Mexico (those gatherings may be virtual depending on the status of COVID-19). Applications are available for purchase until Sept. 23 and must be completed by Sept. 30.
Soularize 2020: The Masculine Path to Healing
October 15-18, 2020
Join Fr. Richard and Illuman for Soularize 2020 online!
For many men the wounding of their souls is not generally recognized until midlife. Unresolved grief, internalized shame and guilt, loneliness, personal family traumas, intergenerational issues, and societal pressures keep many men from moving beyond disorder and into reorder. The wounds of individuals lead to larger wounds in society, which further wound individuals in a negative feedback loop.
Illuman, a nonprofit organization with global allies committed to supporting men who are seeking to deepen their spiritual lives, offers a pathway through. What began as a series of retreats and workshops led by Richard Rohr, Illuman is about men transforming men, working together through order, disorder, and reorder. Drawing from Fr. Richard's teaching and the ancient tools of nature, ritual, image, storytelling, and council, men become healing agents for themselves, each other, and the world. Learn more and register for the virtual conference at illuman.org/soularize2020/.
The CAC is hiring!
We are currently seeking a CRM Product Manager — a senior Salesforce professional to lead the continued investment in our Salesforce implementation and the larger integrated ecosystem. As part of a coordinated Digital Product Team, this person will help empower the CAC staff to utilize Salesforce for maximum possible impact and effectiveness in their job. Know someone who might be interested? Apply today or help us spread the word!
Explore the Mystics on Instagram
Follow @CACradicalgrace on Instagram to learn about the life and teachings of mystics like Teresa of Avila, Symeon the New Theologian, Clare of Assisi and more. Visit our Mystics Highlight to discover what led these contemplatives into mystical union with the Divine, and the challenges that transformed them into wounded healers—from disapproving families to exile by the Church. Then, explore 5-10 minute practices inspired by each mystic in our Instagram feed, like learning to see the beauty in suffering from Teresa of Avila to sacred reading with the words of Howard Thurman.
Action & Contemplation
2020 Daily Meditations Theme
What does God ask of us? To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God. —Micah 6:8
Franciscan Richard Rohr founded the Center for Action and Contemplation in 1987 because he saw a deep need for the integration of both action and contemplation. If we pray but don’t act justly, our faith won’t bear fruit. And without contemplation, activists burn out and even well-intended actions can cause more harm than good. In today’s religious, environmental, and political climate our compassionate engagement is urgent and vital.
In this year’s Daily Meditations, Father Richard helps us learn the dance of action and contemplation. Each week builds on previous topics, but you can join at any time! Click the video to learn more about the theme and to find reflections you may have missed.
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Inspiration for this week's banner image: Being wounded, suffering, and dying are the quickest and most sure paths to truly living. —Richard Rohr
