Stories from The Healing Path (Part 1)

Where are you on The Healing Path? Although we may feel alone when we embark on a healing journey, many of us are walking the same path. After the release of CAC faculty member James Finley’s new book, The Healing Path: A Memoir and an Invitation, we invited several members of the CAC community—Sara, John, and Denny—to share their reflections of the book with us—and with you. 

James Finley writes, “May we, in being transformed and set free, become someone in whose presence others feel safe, seen and accepted. For it is in such encounters that this weary world becomes a blessed place.” 

We hope you’ll find transformation, freedom, and a sense of belonging through these stories from the healing path.  

How would you describe your own healing path?

Sara: My healing path has been—and will always be—a continuous recognition that I am unable to heal myself alone. I am powerless without the transcendent healing of God. A place that has been essential in my healing journey is my backyard garden. When I dig in the dirt, I reconnect with God’s simplicity. When the tulips reemerge, I remember God’s perennial nature. When the dahlias bloom, I study their colors and patterns and wonder how something that starts as a tuber, so seemingly ugly, can grow into a gem of nature.  

John: When I took my initial steps down the healing path about 8 years ago, I had a sense it was going to take some time, but things would steadily get better and better. 

As I sit here almost 10 years on, I have realized that life is not linear — it is a series of ongoing cycles of small deaths and resurrections, as James discusses in the book. We learn and become new versions of ourselves that must start the same cycle. 

Denny: At 75, my healing path has been slow but full of grace. I carried sadness, anger, and pain due to abuse from my alcoholic father and an emotionally incestuous mother. Now after over 25 years of centering prayer, as well as therapy and inpatient treatment for co-dependence, the healing continues. 

I remember, like Jim, when I was in grade school, I would go over to the church to just gaze at the cross. I didn’t know why I was drawn there, but I would often lose track of time. To this day I am drawn to help those who are wounded. Volunteering in prison, serving as a hospice chaplain, and working to end the death penalty are all important parts of my healing journey. Most importantly, my kids have helped me learn to love myself and see how God loves me through them. 

What are some passages from “The Healing Path” by James Finley that resonated with you?

Denny: In Chapter 2, Jim talks about the awakened heart: “This truth being the surprising realization that 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 have scarcely have imagined.” 

Losing my wife to divorce and raising seven kids on my own was the darkest time of my life, yet I always somehow knew that God was walking with me in that darkness. Now as I look back, it was truly a time of grace. I emerged with a clearer understanding of presence. 

John: On pages 92 and 93, Jim writes that without our challenges and traumas we cannot learn, grow, and share—that there are no Easter Sundays without Good Fridays. Our human experience is rooted in shared suffering and walking with others in their suffering. If we realize and accept this, we can better accept our reality share our collective learning and come to understand that Jesus’ suffering is an avenue for us to unite among ourselves. 

Sara: On page 45 Jim writes, “. . . we are learning to discern the ways that God waits, hidden away, searching for openings through which to emerge in joyful moments, granting fleeting tastes of high, high joy of God. . .” as well as “moments of sorrow, inspiring and empowering us to heal as best we can. . .” I love the thought that God hides in wait for us and draws close to us in both joy and sorrow. 

What were some of your “ah-ha” moments from the book, “The Healing Path?”

John: The theme of presence really stood out to me. I began to appreciate how present God is to us and how we, in turn, need to be present to God. We tend to get so wrapped up in the past or overly focused on the future and ignore what and who is right in front of us. God’s name is I AM WHO AM — the God of the here and now. 

Sara: Jim writes that healing energies are released in moments of spiritual awakening. This is how God heals us! My task, then, is to yield to God so He can continue to do His work in me. I must be gentle with myself along this path. As Jim says, the healing path is one in which “we learn to circle back again and again to cultivate within ourselves a more and more merciful understanding of ourselves.” 

Denny: Jim emphasizes that presence exists even within in our dysfunction. I was taught from an early age that if I were bad, God would not love me. That idea was never about God, but instead what I picked up from my family of origin. I still struggle with taking that into my heart. 

The Healing Path: A Memoir and an Invitation can help spark or sustain your own healing journey. Learn more and order a copy from the CAC online Bookstore today! Purchasing from our online bookstore is an easy and effective way to support our mission to journey together on the Christian contemplative path of transformation.  

Join us for a one-day online retreat with The Healing Path author James Finley! Can you follow the thread of your own healing journey? Sign up for Healing Stories: Finding God’s Presence in Trauma, Aug. 26, 9am–5pm PT. Space is limited to create a more intimate online experience.