Words from our Soul Matters  program:

What Does It Mean To Be A People of Healing?

Oh how we want to escape our pain. Worry, loss, death, exhaustion, anxiety, Covid claustrophobia, political instability, the unraveling of our democracy, racial harm. It’s all overwhelming.

But what if the work is to travel toward it? What if proximity to pain not distance from it is the real route to healing?

This is what all the great spiritual traditions teach. Forget eliminating your pain; lean into it. Don’t run from it as fast as you can; befriend it. Hold it in your frightened hands until you realize it’s more malleable than you thought. Until you realize your strong and courageous hands can shape it, can take its sharp edges and mold them into pathways that connect you with other people’s pain, can transform it from a weapon that has wounded you into a bridge that connects you to others.

It’s then that we realize that pain can be more than a cage cutting us off from the world. It can be a tool that makes room, that carves open an entirely new space to live in. A space where we are more deeply connected to each other than we imagined possible.

This of course doesn’t mean the hurt goes away. But it does mean we end up feeling larger, and more whole. And maybe that is the most important healing of all.

Our Soul Matters groups will consider healing this month.  For those of you not in a Soul Matters groups, there is a packet of materials for individual reflection available.

• November packet for Individual reflection