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Tuesday, May 4th, 2021

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Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation

From the Center for Action and Contemplation

Week Eighteen: Trauma and Healing

Our All-Vulnerable God

Very few of us can actually imagine God suffering. I bet almost half the prayers of the Catholic Church begin with “Almighty God” and when you’re “all mighty,” you don’t suffer! And yet if we believe that Jesus reveals the hidden heart of God, we know that God suffers, too. Jesus is continually drawn to the suffering ones and suffers with them. Our English word “pity” doesn’t do justice to the Hebrew concept of the bowel-shaking empathy Jesus felt for the wounded people who came to him. Clinical psychologist and Episcopal priest Rev. Dr. Sally Howard writes about how God meets us in our trauma:

It is a time to discover new stories about our God, who could not bear to stand apart from our suffering and joined us to live as we might live. . . .

Our God, who poured Herself into the creation of all that exists, is subject to risk, to being fractured and torn, just as we are. . . . The knowledge and experience of God’s solidarity and union with us is profoundly healing and can alter the sequela of trauma so as not to become repetitive and recurrent. God desires closeness to all our experience, naked and raw, in its particularity and commonality. . . .

By providing the safe dwelling place, God defeats the horror in our lives. God catches up our trauma and weaves any horror-filled participation into an unending relationship of beatific intimacy. When we recognize God in our own narrative, there is no wound so deep that God cannot heal. [1]

Also in the latest edition of Oneing, CAC faculty member and dear friend James Finley recounts an experience from his doctoral training, during which he served as an intern on an inpatient alcohol treatment unit for veterans. Upon witnessing a new arrival at the unit accept the challenging truth of his addicted situation, Jim saw in the vulnerable alcoholic an insight about God’s presence, protection, and peace.

In the moment he stood there with tears in his eyes, he was vulnerable and, in his vulnerability, true invincibility was being manifested in the world. Thomas Merton (1915–1968) taught there is that in us that is not subject to the brutalities of our own will. No matter how badly we may have trashed ourselves in patterns of self-destructive behavior, this innermost hidden center of ourselves remains invincibly whole and undiminished because it is that in us that belongs entirely to God.

No matter what anyone has done to us in the past, or is doing to us now, or might do to us in the future, this innermost, hidden center of ourselves remains invincibly established in God as a mysterious Presence, as a life that is at once God’s and our own. It is in being awakened to this innermost center of ourselves with God that we find the courage to continue on in the challenging process of healing, grounded in a peace that is not dependent on the outcome of our efforts because it is the peace of God, which depends on nothing and on which everything depends. [2]

[1] Sally A. Howard, “Secure Dwelling and Positive Meaning in the Face of Trauma,” “Trauma,” Oneing, vol. 9, no. 1 (CAC Publishing: 2021), 25–26, 27.

[2] James Finley, “The Spiritual Dimensions of Healing during Traumatizing Times,” “Trauma,” Oneing, vol. 9, no. 1 (CAC Publishing: 2021), 94.

Adapted from Richard Rohr, “God Is All Vulnerable More Than All Mighty,” homily, June 5, 2016.

Image credit: Belinda Rain, Water Drops On Grass (detail), 1972, photograph, California, National Archives.

Image inspiration: Even in and around our sharpest edges the water of life gathers. Soothing, nourishing, healing.

Prayer For Our Community

Loving God, you fill all things with a fullness and hope that we can never comprehend. Thank you for leading us into a time where more of reality is being unveiled for us all to see. We pray that you will take away our natural temptation for cynicism, denial, fear and despair. Help us have the courage to awaken to greater truth, greater humility, and greater care for one another. May we place our hope in what matters and what lasts, trusting in your eternal presence and love. Listen to our hearts’ longings for the healing of our suffering world. Please add your own intentions . . . Knowing, good God, you are hearing us better than we are speaking, we offer these prayers in all the holy names of God. Amen.
Listen to Father Richard pray this prayer aloud.

Story From Our Community

The books of Richard Rohr and James Finley have been instrumental in my spiritual journey. Through their works, I am able to survive and thrive after trauma and discover the healing blessings of peace and divine love, leading me to a contemplative way of being. I am forever grateful for their contribution to creating sparks and fires of divinity in our hearts.
—Adela N.
Share your own story with us.

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News from the CAC

Discover a Path of Healing in ONEING: Trauma

How do you name your trauma? When you pull back the veil of pain that lingers in your heart, mind, and body, could you find God? Illuminate your experience of God in suffering with ONEING: Trauma, a collection of poignant creative works from Richard Rohr, Matthew Fox, Joan Halifax, David Benner, Felicia Murrell, and more.

Interior Castle: An Online Study of Teresa of Avila

During times of trauma, going inward can be a powerful way to deepen compassion and connection. Journey through the seven mansions of St. Teresa of Ávila’s Interior Castle with James Finley, Mirabai Starr and spiritual seekers from all over the world in this 8-week online course. Registration ends May 26, 2021.

Explore Richard Rohr's Daily Meditations archive at cac.org.

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