Listening With Our Wounds

To continue yesterday's thoughts from Henri Nouwen, this arrived in my inbox this morning.

Listening With Our Wounds

To enter into solidarity with a suffering person does not mean that we have to talk with that person about our own suffering. Speaking about our own pain is seldom helpful for someone who is in pain. A wounded healer is someone who can listen to a person in pain without having to speak about his or her own wounds. When we have lived through a painful depression, we can listen with great attentiveness and love to a depressed friend without mentioning our experience. Mostly it is better not to direct a suffering person's attention to ourselves. We have to trust that our own bandaged wounds will allow us to listen to others with our whole beings. That is healing.

Henri Nouwen on Woundedness and Healing

These were rather timely, given some of the stuff I've been going through lately. (more on that later today, or tomorrow.) Three bits from Henri Nouwen that arrived in my inbox over the weekend:

How Time Heals

"Time heals," people often say. This is not true when it means that we will eventually forget the wounds inflicted on us and be able to live on as if nothing happened. That is not really healing; it is simply ignoring reality. But when the expression "time heals" means that faithfulness in a difficult relationship can lead us to a deeper understanding of the ways we have hurt each other, then there is much truth in it. "Time heals" implies not passively waiting but actively working with our pain and trusting in the possibility of forgiveness and reconciliation.

The Wounded Healer

Nobody escapes being wounded. We all are wounded people, whether physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually. The main question is not "How can we hide our wounds?" so we don't have to be embarrassed, but "How can we put our woundedness in the service of others?" When our wounds cease to be a source of shame, and become a source of healing, we have become wounded healers.

Jesus is God's wounded healer: through his wounds we are healed. Jesus' suffering and death brought joy and life. His humiliation brought glory; his rejection brought a community of love. As followers of Jesus we can also allow our wounds to bring healing to others.

Tending Our Own Wounds First

Our own experience with loneliness, depression, and fear can become a gift for others, especially when we have received good care. As long as our wounds are open and bleeding, we scare others away. But after someone has carefully tended to our wounds, they no longer frighten us or others.

When we experience the healing presence of another person, we can discover our own gifts of healing. Then our wounds allow us to enter into a deep solidarity with our wounded brothers and sisters.

Getting Closer

My dad came with my new roommate and I to our new house for an hour tonight.

We had a couch stuck in our stairwell since Monday, propped against a wall, because we couldn't get it down the stairs when we moved a lot of the furniture on Monday. With Dad's help, we now have a couch in our basement.

He helped Jo - my roommate - assemble her dresser, while I puttered around doing a few little organizational type things.

Our kitchen is basically set up, and on Sunday we're going to move my bed, and I'll officially be living there. Crazy!

It's getting closer. Things are coming together. We have a few more purchases to make - things like spices, a couple organizational items, that sort of thing, but then we're down to simply arranging things the way we want and setting up housekeeping. Just at this moment, the fears have mostly taken a hike and I'm feeling very excited. (Not to mention relieved that this process has a foreseeable end!)

With that done, I'm going to take a shower. Jo and I are tagging along with my brother T. and some of his friends to a comedy club tonight, and have plans to take in the Stampede tomorrow for a few hours before the rodeo.

I also need to run a couple quick errands in the morning, so I'm signing off!

Friday Afternoon Musings

I love my hair today, even though I’ve pulled it all back into a pony tail. I went to bed with it wet last night – quick late-night shower to get the aloe vera and sunscreen that were protecting me from further sunburn off of my skin – and woke up with wild crazy curls and waves this morning. I piled it back into a pony tail simply because I desperately need a haircut that I can’t afford and to leave it down wouldn’t have quite managed the “professional” appearance necessary for work. But I just glanced in a mirror, and I’m loving my hair.

I’m vacillating wildly today between moments of planning my new bedroom in my new house, and being completely discombobulated and frightened because after 24 years I have a new house.

I’ve been listening to Jacob and Lily’s “The Cathedral” all day at work again. Something about it just grabs the deeper parts of my heart right now. (I wrote about that yesterday if you’re interested.)

Jann Arden was great last night. We only stayed for an hour, but she is so funny, and played some of my favorites, so it was enjoyable all around.

I’ve been reading the July issue of “Vanity Fair” the last couple of days on the train and my lunch breaks. It’s guest edited by Bono, and all about Africa. Definitely worth picking up and reading. Not my usual quick read in a magazine, but worthwhile.

I ordered internet services for my new house today. They should be in place sometime the middle or end of next week.

I don’t like the way Stampede increases the number of public transit users. The trains were a bit of a disaster this morning thanks to the parade, and I’m dreading the afternoon commute as everyone heads to the grounds to kick off their weekend. Should be equally gross all of next week as well.

As much as I love being warm, there is a limit to how much heat I can tolerate, and we’ve reached it. I shall be extraordinarily glad if the predicted “chance of rain or thundershowers” occurs sometime today or tomorrow – just so the heaven’s don’t open in the middle of tomorrow afternoon while I’m sitting in bleachers watching the rodeo.

I do believe that I may actually be completely moved by the end of this weekend. Not settled yet, but moved. I think I’ll be relieved when that’s finally over. The strain of this transition must be showing in my face. People at work keep asking me how I’m doing, and if I’m okay.

I think we’ll have a big housewarming party in the fall – once some of my friends that are currently traveling on other continents are home, and can attend.

I’m dreaming of my ultimate someday home (assuming I’m still single). I’d like to have a two-bedroom place, filled with books, and warm colors. One room for a bedroom, the other for an office/library. Imagine – a whole room just for books and crafty sorts of things – I love this plan! Rich colors, blues and greens, reds and browns. Whimsical touches – things that stand out a little bit. Lots of sunlight, but great mood lighting at night… (dreaming is rather fun, isn’t it?)

And with that, I suppose I should get back to work… there are things on my desk with no particular deadline, that I need to stretch to fill most of next week as well, but I should at least make the attempt at accomplishing something in the hour and a half or so left before I head home for the weekend! (Filing here I come!)

The Current Soundtrack

I haven't been very tolerant of music lately. So much of the stuff I normally listen to has been grating on my nerves, adding edgyness and discomfort to the rest of the upheaval in my life just presently.

There are, however, two albums that I've been listening to over and over.

The first is a new release from Jason Upton titled “Beautiful People”. I love Jason’s heart for God, and I love the theme of this album. Some of it is stuff that I’ve felt God speaking to me over the last year, and I’m delighted to find someone else expressing the theme of finding Jesus in the broken, in the ashes. One line that sticks out to me from the album (which is at home, while I’m writing this at work, or I’d tell you what song it was from…) goes “You live in the tension, you live in the tension, you live in the tension of creation.” I love that. I’m experiencing on a number of levels again lately what it means to live in tension.

The second album is “The Cathedral” by Jacob and Lily. I think I could listen to Karla and Caleb sing and play pretty much all day. In fact, I know I could, because, on one particularly bleak day earlier this week, where the clouds of mental confusion had closed in and were threatening to overwhelm, I simply played their album over and over on my ipod, through the whole workday. And my soul felt soothed. I don’t know if I can even pick a favorite song off this album. I just know that Karla’s lyrics, and the music that brings them to life have been speaking to the deep parts of my soul lately, and that has been such a surprising, beautiful and calming thing in this space on my journey.