Healing Our Wounds and Healing the World

by Sheena George, CSJP

Healing of any sort of pain, whether physical, emotional or spiritual, can be a long journey. I don’t know about you, but I have noticed that whenever I encounter pain and woundedness, my first tendency is to run away from it. Most often, when I am in emotional pain, rather than dealing with it, I try to distract myself by watching a movie, surfing social media, reading a book, going shopping – anything rather than facing it head-on. Other times, I want to vent to someone whom I trust to get rid of the immediate frustration of what is hurting or upsetting me. Pain can be persistent, and when it keeps trying to force me to pay attention to it, my resistance only gets stronger. I try to push it away. I continue this tug of war with pain until avoidance stops working. Then, I am forced to take the time to sit with my pain and hold it consciously and trustfully like a unique, unwanted gift. It is then that I find myself open to learning and allowing myself to be healed and transformed by the wounds and their pain. Richard Rohr says, “If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it—usually to those closest to us: our family, neighbors, co-workers, and, invariably, the most vulnerable, our children.”

Many of us are wounded, somehow, someway. We are also part of a wounded humanity that needs healing. We live in a time where bullying and scapegoating—essentially exporting our unresolved hurt—has become all too familiar. Our world is yearning for healing, for unity between nations, and harmony among different faiths and cultures. The lives of individuals are marred by violence, betrayal, and abuse, while our planet and the entire ecosystem are also in crisis, crying out for healing.

In his novel The Illumination, Kevin Brockemeier imagines a world in which one day, for unknown reasons, pulsing light emanates from a person’s wounds, whether it be a headache, sore feet, depression, heartbreak, cancer, the effects of war and violence, or any imaginable pain. Sometimes, it appears as sharp shafts of light, other times as a luminescent sheen over a person’s skin. Brockemeier explores how the world changes when people can no longer hide their pain. It takes courage to admit it. Brockemeier reminds us that true healing comes from transforming ourselves from the inside out.

This requires being vulnerable and developing a deep and ongoing relationship with oneself through practices such as prayer, meditation, mindfulness, journaling, yoga, and others. These and many other practices help us become more self-aware and encourage us to slow down, allowing us to work with our thoughts, feelings, and sensations from a place of compassion, solitude, and nonjudgment. Even though it is not an easy practice in these moments of vulnerability and effort, God’s grace reaches to the most vulnerable part of ourselves where it seeks to change us. How beautiful and freeing not to keep our pain hidden from one another. And when we are in touch with our scars, we become humble and more compassionate to the wounded humanity of which we are a part. Karl Rahner thought that “loneliness, disappointment, and the ingratitude of others can be graced moments because they open us to the transcendent. … When we are in touch with ourselves authentically, we experience God.1”

Healing begins from within and spreads outward like the ripples in a pond caused by a pebble. It takes courage, commitment, and hard work to overcome our instinct to deny pain, fix it, control it, or even try to understand it. Healing involves transformation and is both a personal and collective effort. Our actions and who we are in the world have an impact, and each of us can contribute to restoring wholeness and healing to ourselves and the world.

As we seek new and effective ways to bring healing to our world, may we be ever more aware, despite our instinct to hide our wounds, that divine grace waits and longs to reach out to the most vulnerable part of ourselves where it seeks to heal us—and the healing of us brings the healing of the whole world.

1. Callahan, Annice “Traditions of Spiritual Guidance: Karl Rahner’s Insights for Spiritual Direction,” The Way 29 (1989): 341-47.