Sunday
Only if we’re joining God, and God is joining us, in something greater than the sum of all its parts, can we find a way through all of this. Trust in the crucified—and resurrected —Jesus has indeed “saved” many.
—Richard Rohr
Monday
From the hidden depths of a darkness too terrible to name or explain, God can emerge as a sovereign, silent presence that carries us forward, amazed and grateful, into realms of clarity and fulfillment that we could scarcely have imagined.
—James Finley
Tuesday
We tell our stories because all of us have survived something, because stories are signposts from the past that give us clues about the future. Finally, our stories are a witness to the next generation and an opportunity to understand the universal as well as the particular in tales of trauma, healing, and survival.
—Barbara Holmes
Wednesday
Will this land I call “home” become a place where God can be experienced? Can it become a place where the justice and peace of God reign? Can it become a place where Jews, Muslims, and Christians share the land and its resources, have the same rights, and embrace each other as fellow human beings and be reconciled with one another?
—Munther Isaac
Thursday
It sounds paradoxical: by excluding death from our life we cannot live a full life, and by admitting death into our life we enlarge and enrich life.
—Etty Hillesum
Friday
The suffering creatures of this world have a divine Being who does not judge or condemn them, or in any way stand aloof from their plight, but instead, a Being who hangs with them and flows through them, and even toward them in their despair.
—Richard Rohr
Week Thirty-Two Practice
Healing and Joy
Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Susan Shaw recommend discovering joy as a healing practice for those who have survived trauma and physical abuse:
Joy can come upon us unexpectedly; it can wash over us, enfold us, fill us, overwhelm us with feelings too ancient and deep to name. It becomes the unexpected grace that fills our souls with peace and love.
And joy is also a discipline. We seek it; we hunger and thirst after it; we practice it until it becomes habit. How? By directing our attention at every moment to even the smallest of objects, sensations, and emotions in our path. We have to teach ourselves to look for it until our looking becomes habituated. For example, look at your hand. Have you ever marveled at it? Look at everything it can do. Now look deeper. In your mind’s eye, look at the atoms that make up your hand. Every single particle in your hand has existed from the time of the Big Bang. These particles have been other things—perhaps a star, a meteor, a wildflower—and, when your body returns to the earth, these particles will continue to exist and become other things forever and ever. Doesn’t that make you want to shout “hallelujah” to the end of your days?…
Even after the most difficult times, hardships, abuse, and assaults that we may undergo, we can overcome these traumatic events by the Spirit of God which vibrates in us and produces joy.
Reference:
Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Susan M. Shaw, Surviving God: A New Vision of God through the Eyes of Sexual Abuse Survivors (Minneapolis, MN: Broadleaf Books, 2024), 204.
Image credit and inspiration: Jenna Keiper, barbed (detail), 2021, photo, Albuquerque. Click here to enlarge image. Even in the midst of twisted barbs, green life survives and thrives.
