Healing Spiritual Wounds
Dear Beloveds,
In her book Healing Spiritual Wounds, Rev. Carol Howard Merritt tells a story of someone in recovery in her congregation who found that they couldn’t use God as they understood it until they framed God as Love, that Love was their higher power. I really like that story, especially now with Love at the center of Unitarian Universalism.
Spiritual wounds can prevent people from developing a spiritual literacy, vocabulary, and tool belt because theology, ritual, symbols, prayer and other spiritual practices are so often weaponized against people that the spiritual vocabulary and religious concepts become triggers and sources of pain. Eventually when and if people who are spiritually wounded engage in spiritual recovery, it’s more difficult to find the words and concepts to explain your journey and more difficult to find the tools and practices of the spiritual life.
Because spiritual life so often takes place in a community, people who are spiritually wounded find a barrier when it comes to being part of a religious or spiritual community because the spiritual community was the location and source of their wounds. If you were harmed and hurt by religion, finding a spiritual community of any kind becomes a heroic journey and process, even though there are religious communities that are far better, more inclusive and welcoming, more loving and compassionate than the one that hurt you.
Hateful, hurtful, violent people create hateful, hurtful, violent religion. Petty, insecure, gaslighting, abusive people create petty insecure, gaslighting and abusive gods. But loving, compassionate, inclusive, accepting, healing people create a loving community with an accepting and inclusive vision of the sacred, the holy, and humanity. Not a perfect community, but a loving one. Within that community, I hope we can offer spiritual and religious healing to all who need it.
In faith,
Rev. Tony
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