The praying of these psalms during the season of Lent is a tradition said to have originated with St. Augustine. How one prays them during Lent is up to you: in the morning, evening, or during the day, these Psalms help to focus one on the penitential act and the soaring grace that is God’s love and forgiveness.
I invite you to contemplate the words of Psalms 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, and 143.
I’m slow to see things sometimes. I got a question in the comments, a great question, that inspired me to write the post for today. Thanks Wendi!
The question is:
What would you say to someone who’s has trauma from both religion and atheism? Anyone else had this experience?
Regardless of where trauma comes from, it’s important to recognize first of all that it shapes to some extent not only our views on the world, but also our behaviors towards the world, people around us, situations, and experiences. Easiest example that I can come up with is how kids who grow up in a home where this is alcoholism learn very predictable ways of communicating and behaving that work to protect themselves; the behaviors may be unproductive, or perhaps even harmful, but they work to protect from actual, and perceived trauma that may yet occur. In the 90’s, the buzz word for this behavior experience was co-dependency.
I’ve experienced trauma from both atheism and religion–perhaps not to the extent that some who I’ve grown to know have–but trauma none the less. One example of atheistic trauma that I experienced was in university, when a professor who was teaching a class I was in decided to take aim directly at me for what I believed, what I understood, and for asking questions that may have moved towards a more theistic understanding. At one point in a lecture, he came down to me put his face about 4″ from mine, and forcibly yelled at me in the same way a child would justify something to another child in a playground. Recognizing what he’d done, he quickly did the same to a student who was sitting next to me.
I also get a really sick feeling when I watch debates between theists and atheists, or more specifically when I come across statements/videos arguing for either side. It just doesn’t jive for me anymore: I’m not about proving my point to anyone, trying to convince anyone of my beliefs, or bringing anyone forcibly to them.
The first step in addressing my own trauma experience was to acknowledge I didn’t need to argue about my faith anymore, or try to justify my beliefs to anyone. The only duty I had to carry out was to love as I would be loved–to see the face of Christ in every person I met, regardless of how they may see me. That’s no easy feat as you can imagine. But taking the need to play the game of proof or no proof, right or wrong, that means I stopped feeding the need for the trauma to be fed. It meant recognizing that I needed to adjust a lot of behaviors around the model of being right or wrong, the need to find a perpetrator and a victim, the duality that our human world needs to exist.
That doesn’t mean I don’t think people, including myself, can’t ever be in the wrong. It just changes how I choose to navigate the world, what I choose to avoid as being necessary to my spiritual well being, what I choose to accept as ways of expressing my faith in a spiritual context.
Which leads me to how I address trauma.
From a support perspective (I’m a support worker for a non-profit agency by day), it means recognizing that in order to develop a healthy relationship with a person, you need to acknowledge where they’re coming from, what they’re saying to you with word, what they’re saying to you both verbally and with actions. You modify your behavior to recognize a trauma that exists in a person’s life, to honour their lived experience. That allows trust to begin between two people. Once you establish trust, you can begin to help people to see where what they are doing may be trauma based. You help them by using gentleness in every aspect of your time with them: words, how you touch (a high five, a hand on the shoulder for support, a hug), how you are present (do I talk when it’s needed or do I allow myself to be present in silence, maybe in a different room while they do something else). As the relationship grows, you help to stretch a person to move beyond the bubble they’ve created with their experiences, including trauma. It might be as simple as helping someone to take out the garbage, go grocery shopping, or more serious like working toward writing a resume, finding a job, going on a date, finding somewhere to live, looking for a therapist, dealing with addiction, navigating a relationship, navigating the death of a loved one or friend.
In the context of the worshiping community I’m a part of, we first clearly acknowledge that in the past, people may have experienced trauma in a religious context but may still feel a draw towards the experience of spirituality through liturgy. It’s a challenging thing to face that, and to approach wanting to attend a Mass, when every element of that Mass may trigger painful memories, anxiety, fear. Keeping that in mind, no one is ever required to sit through. If someone feels triggered, there is a safe space outside the worship area that they can move to. There are individuals who are trained in trauma informed support available to help through what someone is experiencing. There’s opportunity to debrief after the liturgy, to talk about experiences that may have come up, to share with one another, to share with others trauma we may have in common and ways we’ve worked through it to a more healthier experience. We livestream for people who want to feel safe in their own space, who can just turn it off when they want, or who want to listen in.
Specifically, our worship community is made up of mostly 2SLGBTQIAP+ people who are working through that trauma experience. We see worship as an act of spiritual experience–yes, religion has shaped it. But we reclaim it, change it as we need to to make it more in line with who we are, recognizing that there are elements of the liturgy that are crucial and unchanging.
Regardless of which direction a person’s heart takes them, be it towards atheism or theism in one form or another, the important thing is to be aware of who we are, where our instincts lead us, how we shape our understanding of the world, and to open our hearts towards the experience of love.
In dealing with my own personal trauma experiences, I try to recognize why a behavior is occurring, if it’s trauma based, and if it’s trauma based, what might the initial cause be. The reflective act of contemplation has helped a lot to calm my mind, as well as having a supportive partner, and a supportive doctor! Medication helps–don’t deny yourself that tool if you need it.
Once I recognize that certain experiences, like crowds for example, may trigger a trauma based reaction, I push myself gently into situations that are going to force that trauma response to occur…maybe. When I saw that crowds were a trigger for me, I started going to Costco to shop for groceries with my husband. I don’t know if it’s like it where you live? Costco is a zoo where I live. Being there among the crowds, focusing in shopping rather than focusing on the crowd, I started to develop a thicker skin to the trauma response. Which doesn’t mean I don’t get exhausted and peopled out! But the time it takes for my social battery to drain has increased a lot.
When I recognized that my trauma around religion was based primarily in confrontation, when the confrontations came up where people challenged me on my beliefs, I simply changed my approach: “I’m really sorry, but I don’t want to participate in a debate about this. I don’t try to enforce my beliefs on anyone. I allow people to make up their own minds and make their own choices.”
I’ve as of yet not met an angry atheist. I hope when I do, I’m able to move past my trauma responses and validate that in my world view at least, Christ dwells with them as much as they dwell with me, meaning I am in a position where I need to love. Sin, in my word view at least, is anything that gets in the way of experiencing and sharing Love.
I hope this helps! And, as always, your mileage may vary.
Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of the annual Lenten fast.
Every year, I try to write at least one post a day, reflecting on the scriptural readings of the day, culminating on Easter Sunday. Sometimes it’s hit, sometimes it’s miss.
In my homily this morning, I talked about the importance of focusing ourselves during this period of time on thing spiritual rather than corporal. The world today, especially, invites us to fear, Collectively, I invite each of us in community to reject this as often as we can, focusing instead on the light of Christ within us all.
Already this afternoon, listening to the news, I slipped. It’s impossible not to. I’m drawn to recall something Venerable Fulton Sheen once said about listening to the news–we can’t do anything about it, don’t focus on it. Think globally, act locally, in essence.
When you find yourself in the throws of anxiety listening to the next moves a politician describes, or the reports of a battle, or famine, focus inward. Find if you can, even slightly, the light of Christ. Take time during your day when serving others, when alone in silence, when in traffic or at the grocery store, taking out the trash, cleaning the toilet: look inward, find the love of God, dwell there.
A person says, “I treat everyone equally.” They’re trying to convey that they don’t hold prejudices or make judgements about others. They’re trying to say that they don’t discriminate.
We may even hold this as a tenant of our own personal philosophy.
But do we all treat everyone “equally”? How, for example, do we define what equality is? What is the bar that we use to judge equality?
Take for example the province’s rehabilitation program for drugs and alcohol. Individuals from Regina must call and get into a wait list for a spot in a rehab in Moose Jaw. They must call daily to keep their spot and check in. Once their spot is open, they need to get to Moose Jaw to participate in the program.
If I were an employed individual with a vehicle, three square meals, and access to a telephone this would not be as much of a challenge as if I were an individual who was daily trying to think about where I was going to sleep without freezing to death.
The bar for equal in this situation is not just. It treats everyone equal provided they are able to reach a standard of equality defined by rigid fixed criteria that makes it harder, if not impossible, for an entire group of people with legitimate needs to be “equal”.
When we say we treat everyone “equally”, it is important that we examine what we’re really trying to say. Are we actually treating everyone equally, or are we saying that we will treat someone respectfully provided they meet a standard we may unjustly refer to as “equal”? Does our equality consider the diversity of circumstance, and that some people may have to work over and above what others may to achieve equality?
Saint Francis, recognizing that this practice was not only unjust, but a barrier between him and his full experience of God, did something radically different. He moved himself to the place where the most lowly, the lepers, existed. He made himself equal with the most vulnerable, the untouchables, and served them as if he were less than they were. Christ in the sacraments of the church makes it possible for us to meet the Divine on the same footing; they provide an avenue for us to meet Christ, acknowledge God’s presence within us, within all things, all people.
God’s calculus for equality puts us all on the same starting point. We, in our ego, move ourselves forwards or backwards, sometimes without considering that we may be moving ourselves closer or further away from God’s presence.
During the last RCIA meeting, the question came up about the real presence in the Eucharist: is this really Jesus, or is it just a cracker and some wine/grape juice?
As Catholics, we believe that when the priest consecrates, at that exact moment, something changes the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. He is present in that physical substance–His IS that Physical Substance.
Jesus is also present in worship, in liturgy. When we take part in any of the rituals of our church, Jesus is there. He tells us that when two or more gather in His name, He is present.
He is also present in the moments of solitude when we pray.
This morning, I woke with trouble on my mind. Like the body of water the disciples were on, my mind raced like the boat that bounced up and down.
I prayed. I asked Jesus for help. In that moment, the voice that came back said not to worry, that He’d been helping for quite some time now and would continue to do so.
When we make the leap to move to the bow of the boat, wake Jesus, and ask Him to help, He will.
As we enter the first days of Advent, we have the renewed opportunity to connect with the stillness our faith can provide. Each day gives us the chance to move to the front of the boat, to connect with Jesus, wake Him from His slumber, embrace, quietly whisper, and listen. While the world shakes and drops underneath us from all four corners, take time this Advent to be still, to consider the Nativity, to find peace.
To increase potential viewership, I will be live streaming from my personal Facebook page.
(Lord, forgive me for despairing.)
I will lift up my eyes to the mountains;
From where shall my help come?
My help comes from the Lord,
Who made heaven and earth.
He will not allow your foot to slip;
He who keeps you will not slumber.
Behold, He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.
The Lord is your keeper;
The Lord is your shade on your right hand.
The sun will not smite you by day,
Nor the moon by night.
The Lord will protect you from all evil;
He will keep your soul.
The Lord will guard your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forever.
There have been times when I’ve felt God’s presence; at the words of consecration, He is there, sometimes loudly and lovingly, sometimes softly and nurturing, sometimes touching my pain, my grief, my sorrow, my frustration, my unworthiness.
Other times, I’ve felt the presence of God by His seeming absence from my life.
I experienced a very long dark night in which my grief was overwhelming. My cup runneth over with tears that I had no easy explanation for. Those around me simply did the best they could to compensate for my inability to function, and were unable to understand what was going on. I was so full of this darkness that I wasn’t able to react to what was going on around me except with tears, grief, pain, sorrow.
I reached for explanations beyond medicine because part of the philosophy of those I was running with was that medication was a sign of weakness, and we needed to be stronger than that. There was an expectation of needing to measure up, to “man up”, that I was very much aware of being unable to meet.
Looking back with clarity now, I know there were two components to what was happening to me–there was the very much medical imbalance of chemistry in my brain that was creating a recurring loop of sorts. There was also the diabolical component. When there is a weakness present, it makes it easier for those that want to take advantage to do so. The diabolical prefers to allow an individual to do the work on their own behalf, to feed on what is provided, and to stir the coals to keep the fire burning. In my case, this was what I call the three year dark night, although it may have been a longer or shorter time.
Looking back in clarity now, Jesus was beside me the entire time I was there. I was simply so focused on what was going on that I wasn’t able to see that the darkness of my life was allowed to go so far and no further. I loathed the idea of suicide and became even more deeply entrenched in my grief because of that. That was the bar that Christ lowered.
Why did I go through that dark night? What purpose could that pain have served?
The first thing it did was to lay the foundation for me to pursue my vocation. Had I not been in the deepness of that dark night I would not have come out the way I had. In many ways, the people around me didn’t believe for years that it was over–that may have been their own darkness no longer having a way to relate. I remember the almost frustrated way that people saw my sudden impulse to laughter, that wellspring of joy that simply couldn’t be released or sometimes controlled. They would ask, “Why are you laughing?” and I would respond “Would you rather I be crying?” I felt life again.
This was the presence of Grace in my life. I’d been shown a taste of hell, then very quickly lifted from it. Doors began to open, and when I walked through them, I was met with resentment from the people I ran with. “Why is he going to university? What does he think he can achieve?” “Who would ever consider hiring you?”
It didn’t matter. There was no resentment because I was free.
Keeping the connection with Christ was easy in the beginning because it was so pure, so present. I took steps to fulfill my vocation, doors opened for people who were supportive and showed me love. More, I was given a means to recognize trauma I’d experienced. It’s still taking time to work through, to heal. I’m still triggered by events in my life–moments that, in the past I would be punished for, or would push through in fear of the punishment are now met with empathy, compassion, and affirmation.
Prayer is the means by which we maintain the connection with the Divine. This takes the form of the formal prayers like the Mass, the rosary, reading with a mind to the Divine, cultivating silence and listening. Soon snow will be falling around us. When it does, and it’s falling softly and gently, go outside and listen. Things seem muffled. There’s a stillness even in the presence of the noises of the city. That’s what prayer is like, what prayer is meant to do. It’s the finding of stillness in the presence of the noise of the world. It’s not meant to remove the noise, but rather to exist along side the noise without dwelling in it.
That stillness is achieved in many ways. The simplest is quiet, repetitive prayer. Choose a short prayer, a simple prayer. Close your eyes and simple repeat the prayer in your mind, over and over. Do this for a short period to being, maybe 5-10 minutes. As the prayer becomes part of your inner dialogue, practice walking through the day repeating the prayer. In time, this becomes part of who you are. You will go to sleep in the prayer, stirring in the middle of the night with the prayer in your thoughts, waking with the prayer before you. Make the prayer a part of your being by repeating it constantly and consistently.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
My Jesus, mercy.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.
Hide me in Your Wounds.
Almost a week ago, a few members of our faith community met for the first time to undertake yet another first–the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults, or RCIA. This is another big first for our community as we endeavor to work through the basics of our faith as Eucharistic Catholics.
This is not just another opportunity for our communities growth, but for me as pastor to blog about what we’re learning about!
Every week from now until the Easter Vigil, I’ll be writing and reflecting on these elements of our faith.
As always, you can join us at any time you see a topic you find interesting. Reach out to me at hermitpete71@gmail.com to get a link to our online meeting Monday evenings.
the hermit gardener 