December 26, 2004
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Currently Reading: From Brokenness to Community by Jean Vanier, two lectures that he gave at the Harvard University Divinity School.
Vanier was the founder of the L’Arche community, a community dedicated to providing love and care for those rejected from society, mentally ill, multiple handicapped, people unable to care for themselves. This small booklet seems packed with many interesting ideas that can be applied to us today.
A couple of interesting quotes:
P. 16-17 “To be in communion with someone also means to walk with them. Those of you who have had the privledge of accompanying people in distress and inner pain know that it is not easy to walk with them, without having any answers to their problems or solutions for their pain. For many people in pain there is no solution; for a mother who has just lost her child or for a woman who has just been abandoned by her husband, there is no answer, there is just the pain. What they need is a friend willing to walk with them in all that pain. They do not need someone to tell them to try to forget the pain, because they won’t. It is too deep. When a child has experienced rejection, you can say all sorts of nice things to the child, but that will not take away the pain. It will take a long time for that pain to diminish and it will probably never completely disappear.”
That is so true. In a Bible study our pastor was talking about this. One person asked about smoking. Our pastor said that some people are instantly delivered from smoking (or so it seems). That they spent years getting to a point where they were ready to be instantly delivered. But they forgot those preparatory periods of time. And then they come up to someone who still smokes and makes them feel bad because they are not instantly delivered.
He said that the Holy Spirit works on each person individually and that we have to be so careful about how we talk with others, that maybe some other aspect of a person needs healing first, then the area that you think they need healing will come at a later time.
I know that often when I am hurting people give advice, meaning well, but it becomes so condemning. Some Bible verses, I think are terribly misused, when people say forget what went behind and move on. That is true, the ultimate goal, but often God wants to heal the hurts first so that you are free to move on. It is not always instantaneously. Don’t know if I am stating this clearly.
This statement from page 21 I am wondering about. “I do not believe we can truly enter into our own inner pain and wounds and open our hearts to others unless we have had an experience of God, unless we have been touched by God. We must be touched by the Father in order to experience, as the prodigal son did, that no matter how wounded we may be, we are loved. And not only are we loved, but we too are called to heal and to liberate. This healing power in us will not come from our capacities and our riches, but in and through our poverty. We are called to discover that God can bring peace, compassion and love through our wounds.”
What troubles me about this is that God wants to be invited in, and when we are hurt so much in childhood, those places are so closed off. I know that in my case I had to defend against the hurt by completely walling in anything that was vulnerable. So how can God get there, when I can’t even access that. I think that we learn to love as children – Erick Ericksson said that in order to have basic trust we have to feel loved as an infant. If there is no love, do we have the capacity to feel love from even God?
I guess God can bring compassion through our wounds because when we have been hurt we have two choices, to hurt others or to reach out to other hurting souls. Unfortunately, often in this life hurting people hurt others. I hope and pray that I continue to do the opposite and reach out to help others.
My pastor once asked me how I learned to be a good parent. I told him it was because I did the opposite of what my parents did to me. Often that was the right thing to do. At least my kids feel loved most of the time. Of course they do not like to be forced to do homework or act responsibly, but then again I am their mom, not their buddy. But they know through all of this that I and their father love them very much.
Vanier then talks about the challenges of being in community. That it is more than belonging, but should rather be for becoming. That community gives the freedom to change through love and acceptance. Community is tough to do, I think. We all have our own fears, insecurities, and inadequacies, and we all have a need to appear to others as we are not. To be totally open in a community is quite challenging. Vanier says that it must be through brokenness, because then we have the capacity to be more open.
This is a small, but packed full of interesting thoughts book. I don’t know if it is currently in print. I got it at a used book store. Sometimes you can find real gems there.
Heather
