From Hearing to Listening to Healing

       Wed., 11/9  Overnight the primal scream that has been crying throughout the world found its voice in the United States. A significant part of the US population that has felt unheard and ignored for a long time forced the rest of the country to feel its pain. With seismic force, chasms that many did not know existed, were unearthed in the cities and countrysides of America. 

       After an election colored by name calling, harsh judgments, and false assumptions across the political spectrum, our country is left to deal with a pain, fear, and frustration similar to that which  has raised its head in many countries around the globe. From African countries with no stable government to England, from Arab Spring to Brexit, groups of people have been forcing those who hold the reins of power to pay attention to them. 

       The causes underlying this cacophony are probably multiple, but I’d guess a major one stems from the almost cataclysmic changes that have come to us in just one lifetime - communication, immigration, manufacturing, transportation……  As one commentator put it, it’s as powerful a change in society as the 19^th century industrial revolution. And who’s been hurt the most? The millions of people who have the fewest resources to cope.

       What now? During the election campaign, lines weren’t just drawn in the sand; ditches were dug. Bridges weren’t just dismantled; they were bombed. How does one move on from here?  How does healing and reconstruction begin? Who can lead? 

       This is where we come in, we, people of faith and good will. Our call is as seismic as the one that shook our country last night. We who believe in a power greater than a single individual - humanist, Christian, Jew, Hindu, Muslim, Native American… - all of us are being challenged to reach out across all divides, old or new, to learn another’s reality. Painful as it is, we need to listen to another person’s truth, and try to understand why theirs is different from our own.  All of us are wounded in some way. We are frail and imperfect, but each of us has the power to heal another because we have the power to love. Listening is a form of loving. 

       As a Catholic Christian, I know that the God who lives within me lives within each person around me. I know that Jesus reached out across society’s dividing lines and touched the good within others who had been judged sinful or religiously unclean. I am called to imitate him, and, because at one time or another I have experienced it, I know a word or a touch can heal.

        On this 11/9 I am reminded of another 9/11 when our country was called to come together. Today and the days to come, we are called to put on a new mind, a mind that realizes our individual perspective is not always shared by others, but if we work at it, we can probably find common ground. Our forebears who wrote the constitution had a similar challenge. They succeeded. Can we? Then what?

       

Blessings on us all for the difficult journey ahead.
                       Sr. Colleen Winston, OSB