Living With Trauma: The Healers, 46

Before you start, Gentle Reader, please be warned, this blogpost is going to be most blatantly Christian and I am not apologizing because these are things that need to be written, read, pondered, and inwardly digested. Throughout this series I have been writing about the healers of our collective trauma: who they are, who they are not, what they can do, how it could be done, what needs to be done, and my what a horrendous, sticky and stinking black mess we are all swilling in. The wealthy are not going to come to our aid. The process of getting rich turns people into rapacious beasts, their conscience hung out to dry, their soul bartered for a mess of wealth and earthly possessions. They might give back millions (for them, pocket change) in philanthropic donations and set up benevolent foundations as tax shelters and tax write-offs, thus protecting them from paying their share to the public purse and for the public purse. But, seriously, if there are going to be any billionaires in heaven, they probably were let in through the back door, by accident perhaps, but who am I to know or judge? I don't think we will be seeing a lot of politicians up there, either. They often begin their career with the highest aspirations and the most noble intentions, but remember that little bit of folk wisdom? Politicians are like diapers, because they need to be changed frequently and for the same reasons. It has been noted, by the way, that three of the attendees at the Shermans' memorial service, were the mayor of Toronto, John Tory, Kathleen Wynn, the premier of Ontario, and our own Junior, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. They're all in each other's pockets, and they're all sleeping in the same bed. Don't just change those sheets, burn them! I don't think that we can expect a lot from the military, since their job is killing people made legitimate targets of their violence by being put under the designation of "the enemy". Neither is there a lot that can be expected from most of your average middle class folk who are too busy trying to keep their financial and social cachet in order to have much time or interest in helping the losers of the earth. How about the medical profession? But that is so full of corruption and greed as well as being a Kafkaesque labyrinth that will likely damage further the already damaged than heal them. I am thinking here particularly of the psychiatric industry. And yesterday, writing about the untimely deaths (likely homicide) of Barry and Honey Sherman) we have touched already on Big Pharma, those billionaires less interested in seeing people get well and more interested in profit margins and tax shelters. There are good psychiatrists around, as well as psychologists, social workers, occupational and recreational therapists, employment counselors, doctors, nurses and others. They have all kinds of training and education to their merit, and I think their hearts generally are in the right place. But even if they themselves have been somehow hurt by life, they are discouraged from using their own lived experience of pain as instruments of healing. Mental health peer support workers have a particular edge in the healing professions. We have the lived experience and this lived experience gives us a particular gift, a charism if you will. It almost defies logical expectations, that people who have suffered and who often have to live with social stigma and do daily battle against internalized stigma, should also be so gifted as healers. But we are. And here, Gentle Reader, is where I heavily weigh-in on the Christian essence of this message. God could not fully save us from ourselves until he became one of us, one with us, and suffered every bit the horrors of our traumatized existence that many of us have to live with every day of our lives. So, he came to us as Jesus, born in absolute humility, in a barn, of poor parents and of dubious paternity. The power of his message was only fully released and unleashed in the world when he was ignominiously nailed to a cross as a common criminal, following a false trial in a kangaroo court, torture and beatings. We believe that as God he couldn't stay in the tomb and so he rose from the dead, not in pomp and splendour, but silently, with great humility, as he revealed himself to his faithful then was taken up into heaven. Then he sent his Holy Spirit, empowering his followers to spread his message of love throughout the earth. He was not like Mohammed, who became a political leader and a military tactician with not a little human blood on his hands. This was not how God chose to reveal himself, and as much as I respect Islam and its many adherents, the life of Mohammed does not represent the way of God, but the very human way of securing power. This doesn't mean that I don't believe that Islam is relevant, I simply have doubts about the use of force and bloodshed for spreading a message of love. But in Christ, who accepted humility and humiliation as the way to secure us to God, we have this approach, this access to God, not through strength, power and dominance, but through humility, brokenness and servanthood. I am happy to add, by the way, that regardless my opinion of the prophet Mohammed, I believe many of the adherents of the Islamic faith to be genuine and authentic people of God. I even believe this about a few Christians!