Reflection Roundup: Trauma as Teacher
Each week we gather news stories, notable pieces, and other important items for Christian leaders today. As always, listening broadly draws together differing perspectives from which we can learn but may not concur. Here are 10 things worth sharing this week.
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1. Author, sociologist, and self-described “researcher, storyteller, and Texan” Brené Brown, says that “courage is contagious. Every time we choose courage, we make everyone around us a little better and the world a little braver.” On a recent Unlocking Us podcast episode, Brown shared a conversation with “Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Bruce D. Perry on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing.” This compelling dialog highlights the issue in a new way, reminding us of the truth that safety and security not only allow us the resilience to navigate life’s inevitable ups and downs, but also facilitate the curiosity needed to thrive as the missional emissaries for the kingdom we truly are. Do take note: this episode contains moderate language, by which the individuals reveal the nature of the subject matter as it strikes a chord within each of them and, vicariously, the listener. Fair warning: Brown is a Longhorn.
2. It is possible that the trauma of pandemic life lived over the course of a year, along with the diminished ability to participate in usual activities, has tipped many of us into a mentality of scarcity with relation to our time. I know I find myself moving sequentially from one task to another, even in what might look, from the outside, like “my spare time.” Faith and Leadership’s Alaina Kleinbeck calls this phenomenon “monochronic,” or sequential, in “A new relationship with time.” Besides bowling over anyone or anything that gets in the way of our tasks, functioning in this way diminishes the value of other cultural approaches to the management of self amid time, task, and community. Kleinbeck describes a different “polychronic” experience, giving six examples of concrete ways to reorient in relation to the people and tasks with which we are involved that are sure to touch each of our circumstances.
3. Rather than relent, the challenges continue and grow in complexity. Empathetic ministry, whether vocational or volunteer, can feel like an island when caring for others whose trauma can feel like our own. Our bodies elicit a response conveying they don’t delineate “me” versus “not me,” and the stress hormones wash over our brains. How does the minister recharge? Where does the shepherd find solace? Jessica Young Brown, assistant professor of counseling and practical theology at Virginia Union University, writes “Who cares for the shepherds? The secondary trauma of faith leaders must be addressed,” reminding us to “rethink, rework,” and make space for our own renewal and that of others.
4. What things are not going to change? Our congregants are beginning to voice this question many of us have likely been wondering. Congregational Consulting Group’s David Brubaker, in “Congregational Constants,” reminds leaders that it is often their posture during a liminal season that models for a congregation how they will weather conflict as a body. Structures must both serve the congregation and facilitate its service. Culture indicates what a congregation loves, and change can only be facilitated out of this love.
5. The Siburt Institute for Church Ministry’s final Intersection for the spring features this conversation between Randy Harris and Priscilla Pope-Levison, author of the award-winning book Models of Evangelism surrounding the themes of “hospitality, developing relationships, being people of integrity, bearing the message, and being rooted in the church.” Pope-Levison asks the question, “Are we responding to those who choose to enter the midst of our fellowship?” In our post-Christendom culture, political agendas and life as status quo get in the way of relationship-building that lasts. It takes a long time. A deeper sense of discipleship will facilitate what’s necessary to “speak and act the good news in a way that is winsome and encouraging,” though the gospel doesn’t promise to leave everything “shiny and bright.” We must be an honest, transparent community, confident God meets us where we’re going and is already active there in our relationships with one another and with presence, and giving us a model to follow in reaching out for one another.
6. As we consider prioritizing relational reach, Richard Beck’s Experimental Theology blog post “On Job: Speaking About Versus Speaking To” offers a timely distinction, following Job’s model of relating to God amid discontent, that will make all the difference. Beck poses a fair question contingent upon our willingness to observe our own daily iterations “from the balcony” and watch what we say, how we interact, and to what avail.
7. Some of us may feel just as (or even more) traumatized by the ideas of reopening and “new normal” as we have been by the pandemic itself. We are not alone in this as Stephanie Paulsell, professor at Harvard Divinity School, reflects for the Christian Century in “As the world reopens post-pandemic, how will we find our way in it?” Paulsell finds parallels between our present new path and the one foraged by Teresa of Avila in her prayer-journey book, The Interior Castle. “Teresa was fearful of starting something new, of all it would require,” Paulsell explains. Speaking further of Teresa of Avila, “the whole point of the journey inward is to make ourselves fit for service to our neighbor; the whole point is to love more.” Love our neighbors more, as we love ourselves.
8. Jessica Young Brown’s “Trauma upon trauma” is difficult to read, yet for this very reason it’s important. Life has a way of getting our attention; trauma pulls our attention toward the situation and plight of others. I’m sad it takes trauma to achieve this. These stories of lives and deaths traumatize, yet all must remain mindful and instrumental in the “endless, exhausting struggle to survive” that Brown reminds is many people’s daily reality.
9. And this is just a really cool thing that is happening.
10. Now after all that, crawl up here and rest awhile.
