Building On Trauma 3

Nothing goes farther in life than empathy and compassion.  They even outstrip hate and selfishness in their reach.  Trauma is the birthplace of love, which is to say, the love that engenders empathy and compassion.  I think this is what has always made Jesus particularly attractive to me.  The trauma of the cross being the fountainhead of the mercy, compassion and grace pouring out from the wounds on his body, providing the lifeline for our broken and disenfranchised humanity.

I heard something on the CBC program about spirituality and religion, Tapestry, this afternoon, that I find concerning.  They were talking about a virtual reality machine or app for stimulating religious experience and empathy.  Then, in a spirit of irony, the host suggested that they might use a similar app for reducing empathy in the case of training soldiers to be able to kill on the battlefield without compunctions of conscience. 

I did not leave my parents' house that day in December, just four days after Christmas in 1970, with the intention of seeing the course of my life changed forever.  But that is precisely what happened.  I had done nothing to prepare, to read or study, or attend church groups or speak with a minister.  Returning home that evening with a profound sense that Christ had just entered my life would have been the last thing on my mind that day, and had anyone told me that that is exactly what would have happened then I would have had a good, hard and long laugh about it.

As previously mentioned, Gentle Reader, I was already traumatized, by childhood abuse, schoolyard bullying, and my parents' prolonged divorce.  I had already staked my own claim in my future by venturing out alone over the last six months to explore life, to experiment and experience and to learn.  The trauma that had afflicted me was my guide in this.  It wasn't to staunch the pain, but to find meaning in it all.  I had to know what this all meant, and what benefit, if any, I could possibly extract from my sad first fourteen years of existence on this earth.

That night, driven out of my home by trauma, kneeling in an attic bedroom in an ancient house on the Fairview Slopes (no longer standing) and surrounded by a half dozen Christian young men, themselves brought here by trauma, I surrendered my life to Jesus Christ, the Lord and Healer of trauma.

It has not been an easy life, but it has been filled with joy along with the pain, and even though the experience of trauma has remained the gift that goes on giving, it has always born fruit, as the presence and reality of Jesus Christ keeps making sense of, teaching me, and redeeming the pain.  With this, I still move forward.