Reflections on Reconciliation

12/10/23

In thinking back on my past church trauma from a community member’s perspective, I remember what it's like to be caught up in the flurry of when things quickly go wrong.

When we suddenly think that people in leadership who we thought loved us and protected us are not trustworthy (unfortunately far too often this is true), we can make rash decisions or think others are making them against us. Rushes to judgment follow to self-protect, or reading into judgment where it does not exist can occur when we are feeling tender.

I have a big place in my heart for this scenario and the twisted leviathan it becomes so fast. I carry a seasoned, carefully evaluated and deconstructed understanding of what to anticipate, having filtered this experience as an adult. Huge space exists in my heart for the multi-directional domino effect and collapsing judgment and exhaustion. I can only imagine how many iterations of these events can play out.

What I have significantly less space for is leadership who give up on their designated role to cooperate, de-escalate, reinforce trust, be truthful and trauma-informed, placing their immediate wounds and frustrations aside and refusing to let those things come between community members but instead unifying and untangling the people they serve and the relationships they have agreed to protect when things go wrong.

A lot of people have walked through church trauma. I walked through mine with an eye to understand what goes wrong, how to prevent it and how to heal it even while it was choking out my very breath because I refused to let it tell me I should give up or that others were evil or that I never knew them…or any other lie. I don't know how I knew to do this except that I lean into my Chiron (which is a gift I've been given from astrology and the primary feature of my chart and my life's call: The Wounded Healer). Spirit was intended for me in this way.

My passion is reconciliation and fully understanding how to slow people down when this happens, not just to stand up and talk about it and pretend I’m an expert on trauma and boundaries but to actually lean into them and dig into them in every possible way so that I can collaboratively learn what helps, hurts and heals with no assumptions. It's risky. It's messy. So we seek backup people to help us when we get tangled. We designate our Untanglers-of-Knots. But these saints have to show up and care. I find ditching this role and deception within the role very hard to forgive.

Still. Even in this latter case I love reconciliation with my whole heart.

Why does reconciliation even matter if we’ve decided to just move on?

First, maybe we haven't imagined what's possible with support. I've seen what's possible with revolutionary support now. Respect for privacy. Respect for transparency. Appreciation for relationships. Respect for the misunderstood and the absent. Sharing of an innovative vision. Collective/individual investment in intentional community, individual authority, and the queering of policy making. Tenderness for the hurting. Space for misunderstandings and overreactions. Invitation to the need for deeper understanding of boundaries. Investment in skilling up where there is difficulty learning how to navigate together.

But also, reconciling really isn't only about healing one relationship or trying again. It's also about healing our hearts, our understanding, our beliefs, and especially the new script that we write about ourselves and others in the world around us after a painful event. It's about so much more, like what we project out into the world in our next phase. Who do we take with us, together or apart, so as not to scatter ourselves, but to become whole?

Is it possible that what we wanted all along is still possible? Or something new and better? Either way maybe we won't spin for the next year-and-a-half posting angry memes on Facebook or crying in grief and unnecessary shame alone but will believe that we are truly valuable and beautiful and purposeful and loved and that nothing is really lost but everything is gained, together. Maybe we will find the true thing we long for with courage.

Reconciliation heals our hearts. That's why I have high expectations of leadership to support the process and slow down damage when it is occurring before it spins out of control. Once we see it from the other side, we understand why slowing down is so important. We understand what is possible. And we know that people take a while to learn how not to hurt each other because we literally all speak such different languages and sometimes our languages contradict each other at the most inopportune times.

These small acts of Shalom prevent wars.

These.small.acts.of.Shalom.prevent.wars.

They rewrite the human condition.

We're longing for the full human experience and if part of that is resisting patriarchy, and if another part of that is anger, and if part is intimacy, and if another part is grief, then a huge and important part of that human experience is most definitely healing.

I'm in this with you. Please don't give up.