I am working on talks for a Healing Conference in Greenville, S.C. I will be contributing to in June. I was stuck a little thinking of people coming desperately wanting physical healing, which will be prayed for in the first segment by Fr. Longenecker, and then having to listen to me on toxic emotions they are usually in denial of.
The old image of Henri Nouwen in his most popular book, The Wounded Healer, came up to give me an approach. Negative emotions such as anger and anxiety are actually toxic. They are “kill-joys.” I thought of a joyful little kid jumping around noisily and suddenly being hit by an angry alcoholic parent. “Wounded” by the negative emotions of our parents, we then go out wounding others, often in more subtle forms such as the “sword” of sarcasm.
Our good emotions such as patience, kindness, are soothing, by contrast.
“No one heals himself by wounding another,” is, I think, a saying from Nouwen’s book.
As I work on the talk I will share any nuggets with you’all.
Dr. Ronda Chervin has many free e-books and audios on her website rondachervin.com. If you go to her website and read or listen and then want to correspond with her she will be available. Her schedule does not permit, however, responding to comments on the Blog, though she enjoys reading them. Dr. Ronda’s newest project is spiritualityrunningtogod.com.
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1 Robert L. Fox says...
Good saying! Best of Providence in putting the talk together.
I'm Irish… meaning sarcasm and facetiousness come very naturally to me.
It has taken most of married life to try and bring it all under the submission of the Gospel of Jesus Christ (And God is CERTAINLY not done with me yet, in this regard).
Fortunately, I married a very sensitive (and easily injured) Italian girl many years ago. Since every action in the universe has an equal and opposite reaction, I have learned that I can be VERY subtly destructive… verbally.
My children, now that they are teen-agers are, an excellent form of gentle correction for me too… as they will give me subtle look or
ahem- when my 'Irish' begins to emerge during the normal family controversies that life dishes out. They are the essence of kindness when gently letting me know that I'm acting like a boob.This brings me to a great little book called 'My Daily Life' which is one of those small little books put out by The Confraternity of the Precious Blood. It is really a book which explains how our human nature works and why we are so damaged. In essence… the book describes some of the 'mechanics of sin' and what happens to us under the best and worst circumstances, especially when we are very young… and how that effects our discipleship. It also offers some practical ways to circumnavigate our sin nature.
I highly recommend it for understanding brokenness in pursuit of holiness.
The other thing I discovered while studying the life of one Mother Mary Angelica of the Annunciation (the foundress of EWTN) was that God can do anything with practically nothing. All we have to do is meet Him in adoration and trust Him and apply what little gifts we have. Anything we do is Him… and we could not so much as do the most basic and humble things in life were it not for His Third Person of the Blessed Trinity and the Queen Bride of the Holy Ghost.
Ave Maria!
Bob & Fam.
Posted at 5:53 a.m. on April 30, 2011