by Sherry Cothran | Feb 28, 2017 | Uncategorized
We all yearn for spring, for the thaw, with its fluorescent green and goldenrod. In the doldrums of the long winter, we are oblivious to spring’s surprises, her thunderstorms and her turbulent tornadoes.
We are not ready for what we love.
We’re living in a new normal. More ice, more snow, more fire, more wind, less rain and more rain than ever before. More heat will come with summer, more than we think we can bear.
The world is a beautiful and terrifying place all the time and it is where I belong. I belong to the earth, to the rivers, lakes and oceans, to the wind and the air, to the fires that rage, they are all me and I am them. In this biosphere, space ship earth that we are living on, we all get recycled.
We are reminded of this on Ash Wednesday, how very recyclable we are. I will say, as I take my finger and smudge it in some dust, push back the hair of those who have come from their precious brows and make the sign of a cross, “from ashes you came and to ashes you shall return.” It’s a sobering reminder that we are all connected through our very birth and death to one another, to creation, that all things capable of life are in fact, in one form or another, still living.
This comforts me.
I overheard two older men in a coffee shop talking about “little deaths.” One of them was a Wise Old Man,
I could tell, he was the one giving the advice to the man who was facing cancer. He talked about the “little deaths” in the form of all the things we lose, the car keys, the wallet, the life we once had, a loved one, our mobility, our freedom. He then said something about attunement. I became aware that I was eavesdropping and then stopped listening, though I could not help but smile. Attunement is simply the act of bringing all things into harmony. This WOM was trying to help the other find harmony in the act of living and dying. It was a beautiful thing to experience, the exchange of loving and caring in the act of comforting through truthfulness and wisdom.
Each day, we have something to give to someone along the way; a smile, a word of encouragement, an expression of hope. Think of all the things the world gives you without ever asking for anything in return. The sun shines, as does the moon, creating day and night, we love the contrast of light and dark and the beautiful moments as it changes. The earth brings food, creation brings rain and all the things that are needed for the conditions of life are provided for us for free. How much more we can offer the earth and one another when we live each day in the mindfulness that we belong to an order much greater than ourselves, and yet we have been invited to experience it, to become attuned to its natural rhythm, to rescue creation, each in our own small way, from the damages done.
This week, to those of us who receive the mark of the cross and follow the Christ on that journey of life and death and resurrection, let us meditate on that phrase, “From ashes you came and to ashes you shall return.” Let it be a reminder that though our bodies may be tethered to earth, our spirits were meant to soar. We belong to a greater gift than we could ever give, made real to us in so many ways, every day. The gift of life unending, the gift of the ashes.
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by Sherry Cothran | Oct 27, 2016 | faith, religion, Sherry blogs, spirituality, Wild Woman Archetype
…the kind of imagination it will take to re-invent the world.
Clarissa Pinkola Estes said that the words “wild” and “woman” create a fairytale knock on the door of heart. Theologian Paul Ricoeur convinced us that words create worlds. “Deplorables” as a word used to describe a group of people with heartbeats who pay taxes and love their children is unacceptable, too.
Words create worlds and we are all wondering what kind of world we will wake up to on Nov. 9th. Whatever that world looks like, the reality is, it will be up to us to re-invent it and it will require a great deal of imagination and care for the words we choose.
The truth is, as much as I am reluctant to admit it, one whose very profession is studying the nature of God in the world,much of our impoverished imagination comes directly from the ways in which we have interpreted Bible.
Depth Psychologist C.G. Jung said that in order to understand the American psyche, one must read the Bible. And what he meant by that was that America was built largely through an early partnership between politics and church. My own denomination, Methodism, was the largest Protestant sect in early America, forming towns, cities, schools, hospitals and was the a great center of the civilizing force of our country. Ulysses S. Grant said that there were three great political parties in America: Republicans, Democrats and Methodists. The best selling book in the world, the Bible, still has major game and influence when it comes to worldview.
The wake up call for us is that the Bible’s social and political framework for a delivery system for the Word of God was patriarchy, and not necessarily the benevolent kind. The stories that narrate our faith world and have formed the psyche of a nation, the stories that make up the best selling book ever in the world, the stories that tell us who we are as a people are often hostile to over half of our national population. That said, even this realization hasn’t hindered individuals and faith communities from practicing the Bible’s mandate of unconditional love, it just doesn’t seem to make the daily news.
What we realize, faith communities who choose to re-imagine faith in the 21st Century, is that just because the Word of God came to us in the framework of a social and political system beginning over three thousand years ago known as patriarchy, doesn’t mean faith communities are confined to a system that is oppressive for many people. In fact, even Jesus challenged to reform by saying to his followers “you will do greater things than me.” And we all know he was a liberator of those oppressed by the system, particularly women.
And just because the candidates for leaders of the free world (one of them Methodist) may lack imagination in the words they use to describe one another doesn’t mean we have to go and do likewise. In fact, we can do better.
Our world will only be as good as we can imagine it to be. Because imagination is actually our built in communication system with God, we can even re-imagine our interpretations of Bible. Because there are also stories that tell of a counter-narrative, hidden in the Bible’s unexplored territories in which women rise above their status as property and become leaders: warriors, prophets and military heroes.
We don’t have to throw out our old traditions in order to grow to a place that creates an environment of flourishing for everyone. In fact, that would be tragic. We hold on to the traditions that help us move forward even as we let go of the ones that hold us back. Tradition pulls one way, progress pulls the other, and we arrive at a third way forward. That is how we grow. Because love is always preferenced as the way of God in the end and to love is to allow people to grow. Too much emphasis on either tradition or progress causes stagnancy or deterioration. We learn to grow best in the tension. Our democratic system is actually built for positive movement forward, that is, if we can only imagine it.
On November 9th, we will all have a new reality no matter who is elected and the truth is, we will all have a big job on our hands, the re-imagination of our world. Perhaps the true leadership is in our hands and our hearts and yes, even and especially in our faith communities.
by Sherry Cothran | Oct 19, 2016 | faith, Sherry blogs
If you’re like me, one of the statistics, the one in three women of the world who has suffered violence in the form of sexual abuse, then you understand why this time we are living through is both wonderful and horrible. What I refer to as a fantastic terror. I can’t watch a presidential debate or news surrounding the election without feeling sick in my stomach, a burning sensation deep in the belly. It seems to occur no matter who is speaking. Judging from the many articles with similar titles as this one, this election has become synonymous with the word trigger. On the feeling wheel, they call this feeling shame, but that seems off somehow. It feels like a jagged stake or a dagger, five thousand butterflies with teeth, a nightmare going on in the belly.
So, I, like so many other women, can’t turn on the news that much, or be on Facebook more than a few seconds, we are living through the massive unveiling of thousands of years of feminine suppression, and it’s not pretty. Change rarely is.
Many predicted this time, in fact, Depth Psychologist C.G.Jung, a few decades ago, predicted that in the 21st Century, we would live through a time in which the feminine asserted herself as a dark force in the world, an angry energy demanding that she be restored to her original self. He said she had lived way too long in the shadows, in a kind of indentured servitude to male authority. He was talking about the archetype of the feminine, that identity that is the root of all women, the one that we have such a hard time connecting to due to its suppression in systems constructed around male authority. This is not demeaning males in any way, systems are much bigger than individuals. It’s just the way things have been constructed for a very long time.
So, I suppose that is what we’re living through now, some are calling it a “moment,” but I feel it’s more like the kind of earthquake that created the Grand Canyon, it’s shaking the foundations of the structures we’ve built our lives on, and when this kind of change is on the horizon, there is always pushback. As Tennyson said, “nature’s red tooth and claw.” She is, indeed,
The difficult thing about being a statistic of sexual violence is that in order to recover from the trauma, coming out of denial is the first step. Until you come out of denial, you simply have very little choice in your own life. And coming out of denial is a long, long process, sometimes taking years. That means that over the course of this “moment” we are in, likely millions of women will begin to come out of denial, judging from the already clogged support hotlines heating up during this mass unveiling we are living through. And it can be a dangerous thing to come out of denial to a family, a community, a country, a world that is not receptive to something as fragile and potentially life threatening as a person’s stored trauma and pain. We are going to need some massive efforts at healing this massive pain.
For me, a women’s recovery group has been the healing agent, along with faith, writing, a loving church family and supporting males and females who play the roles of mentors and friends in my life. Healing is not an option for me anymore, it’s simply a necessary journey. Coming out of denial and the victim narrative was a very important first step, and many, many women are taking some of their very first steps right now.
The interesting thing is that the women who have been the assaulted ones, the wounded, are becoming the healing agents, the ones leading the way by having the courage to speak up and tell their stories, the wounded healers. For many women, it’s a huge risk to do this publicly, because women who have been victims are often seen as weak and defenseless or on the flip side, they are blamed for their misfortune. When, in fact, the pain that we have lived through in silence approaches what some recovery material calls holocaust dimensions. It is very real.
The truth is that a woman’s identity has largely been a hidden thing for a few thousand years. We are not going to recover over night, but we will recover if we take the journey. There is a soul inside of us all, the image of the Creator, waiting to be born, waiting to rise, a true self waiting to emerge. And when this healing happens for women all over the world, it will lead us into healing narratives for all the other pains we are living through. We know that the wounds of trauma begin to heal in relationships as we become open to being the agents of healing for one another. We may be in a moment, but let’s hope something has begun that will shape us all in the path of wholeness. We will get through this election, somehow, together.
by Sherry Cothran | Oct 5, 2016 | faith, Sherry blogs, spirituality
In a post 9/11 world, we live in a culture of collective trauma. It’s not something most of us want to discuss over coffee, in fact, we’d really rather avoid any unpleasant conversation about collective pain in general and the resulting fall out. But here we are very obviously in desperate need of a few solid clues as to why everyone seems to be trying to live life to the fullest from a center that, as W.B Yeats said, simply “cannot hold.”
What does it feel like to live in a culture of collective trauma? It feels like we may have lost access to a loving, hopeful or joyful self, the very center of our being. iIt seems the evidence around us points only to the tragic loss of the kind of safety or sanity. And that is the core issue, that we are trying to gain a sense of peace, sanity and stability from outside of ourselves. When fear and trauma become dominant states, we begin grasping for solutions. Where we may have once lived in a world that seemed to be able to provide a measure of stability, we find that our usual framework has lost its ability to sustain us anymore. The key to healing the wounds of collective trauma is going within, but that is easier said than done.
Trauma effects us in many different ways, but one of the main coping mechanisms for dealing with unrealized trauma is hypervigilence, emerging from the constant expectation that something horrible is about to happen, it is the state of constantly keeping watch and managing one’s environment. Most of us experience it as anxiety, some as anger, but it is also there in addictions to media devices and the constant news feeds of the subsequent horror of the ongoing tragedies of the world. Our hypervigilance gets confirmed over and over again by our news feeds through the evidence of terrible events unfolding all over the world. A hypervigilant state then becomes justified and we are caught in an unending loop. We can easily become trapped in hypervigilance and this can keep us from a taking the healing journey within. Hypervigilence can also keep us in a state of fatigue and exhaustion.
Collective trauma also generates the feeling that the world, events and our lives are moving very fast and it is difficult to slow down. Traumatic experience, left untreated, separates a person from his or her ability to self modulate between extreme emotional states of highs and lows. In order to cope, a person uses either/ or thinking or fight or flight responses whenever challenging situations arise. Anger and fear are the emotions that rule a culture trapped in a collective trauma. Media seems to play a prominent role in maintaining a hypervigilant state, though it can also provide opportunities for healing. Media or any medium for collective experience can also become tools for healing the wounds left by trauma.
What we all too often fail to experience in our culture is any true acknowledgment and would be healing from the deep psychological wounds of trauma. But how do we even approach these wounds that seem to overwhelm us at every turn? The pain seems so much greater than the solutions. In addition, the places that once seemed to keep peace and order are disappearing due to lack of interest. Churches are closing at an alarming rate, massive expanses of wilderness are being co-opted for natural resource development, the places that once brought peace seem to be bordering on extinction.
When Jesus, the great healer, walked among us, he shared the radical notion that the kingdom of God, the place where the healing happens, is within. Whether you think of it as a kingdom or a realm or a dimension, it’s the same thing, he told us that we must go within if we are to discover our authentic soul life awaiting us, that part of us that is eternal, indestructible, connected to God, connected to love. Some have gone so far as to say that in our time, even the soul is at risk. I suppose Jesus said this, too, in a way when he warned, “do not fear those who can kill the body but cannot kill the soul, rather fear the one who can kill both the body and the soul…” (Matthew 10:28)
Jesus left the Christ (Holy) Spirit on earth as a guide, comforter and intercessor to the God within. If we continue to seek out what is hidden in our hearts, believing, we will begin to catch some initial glimpses of the possibility of healing. But we cannot do it alone, we need others to walk with us.
Faith communities are set up to be places that provide stability for people to experience moving from a trauma driven way of functioning in the world, to a love infused way of functioning. But all too often, we never make it past functioning mode. However, if we can bring this kind of awareness into our lives of faith, we can turn that around, too. A slow conversion to a God that heals, removes the barriers to our healing and enables us to live life from a center of love.
Just as collective trauma is contagious, so is collective healing. Our journey inward to sit with pain, to bring it before the Divine Light and risk loving love into being is the pathway to overcoming fear in our ourselves and in our world. We must learn to seek out the trauma in ourselves and allow God to heal us if we are to try and help others or set out to make the world a better place.
We are due for a collective healing and it begins in each of our hearts, each day. Claim some territory in your heart today for healing, slow down, breathe, meditate on the heart. As you do, ask God to be present and feel the wounds of fear letting go. Keep coming back to the prayer of the heart and to the community of prayer, the heart among hearts of love will surely find the way to God.
What are your thoughts on this post? What are some strategies you are using to become more emotionally resilient in your day to day life? Leave your comments here.
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by Sherry Cothran | May 12, 2016 | faith, religion, Sherry blogs, spirituality
Although I’m a preacher these days, which still seems a little strange, there was a time in my life when I, like so many “nones” and “dones,” left the church. In my early 20’s, I started a rock band, not that the two realms are mutually exclusive, it’s just what I did. For over a decade, I sang loudly and quite convincingly at the top of my lungs about the vicissitudes of American culture. While I easily lost myself in the ever-exciting carney life and the accompanying taste of fame that came with success, I eventually crashed hard into a concept that had been taught to me in my first class from undergrad, music business 101: “Art and commerce do not mix.” You stir them together and the soul of the art becomes colonized, taken hostage to greed, money, big business. Art becomes something else altogether, something that no longer resembles itself.
A decade later, I became what my jaded music business professors had warned me about – a successful brand. As I constantly observed myself in glossy photos and read the reviews in magazines and papers, I felt myself changing, becoming more commodity than human, a mere product of a large corporation. As the brand, “Me, Inc.,” I began to lose sight of my own depth and dimension. I was searching for the real me, fooled by the constant accolades into believing that I was special, and before I ever made contact with my true self, I had sold her rights to the highest bidder, a major label. A decade after leaving the church, I left the music business, too, and the search continued for some core in me that felt authentic. I came full circle, oddly enough, to a seminary that has as its title, “Divinity School.” I joked that I was learning how to become Divine but what I found there was a story that would lead me home, as T. S. Elliot says, “to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”
What is true about art and commerce is also true about Christianity and commerce, they are not supposed to mix, but in America, at least, they have always been intertwined. So much so that a visiting historian/philosopher to an early 1800’s America had a hard time telling the difference between the two. Alexis de Toqueville wrote of his disturbing discoveries in Democracy in America that wherever he expected to meet a clergyman, he met, instead, a politician… a salesman. He noted the vast power that the clergy held over the people in matters of morality, and more disturbingly, in the court cases he attended, that one’s church membership or “proof of salvation” was also a necessary and vital piece of evidence in order for a convicted person to gain a hearing.
“Proof of salvation” was not only like having a stamped ticket to heaven, it was seen as a one of the necessities for good standing in the community and in a newly forming civilization, that can mean life or death. Some American religious historians claim that salvation soon became almost synonymous with what it meant to be an American citizen. It was not only protection in the here and the afterworld, it was currency, one could get ahead in society by trading on one’s good name, backed by proof of salvation. Churches often functioned as the civilizing and moralizing arm of the government in a burgeoning nation seeking freedom from religious oppression and creating, in the wake of that freedom, a new kind of religion. Some have named it “Capitalist Christianity,” its main product, salvation.
It wasn’t always this way. When Jesus told Peter he was the to be the rock of the church, I doubt he had a brand platform in mind. It must have been tempting, Jesus was so good at metaphor and the turning of a phrase, a natural born salesman, some say, the greatest salesman in the world. Yet, he simply had nothing to sell, which made him even more appealing. You can’t sell what’s free. We tend to be confused by a Jesus who has nothing to sell. To be Christian was to choose a different way of living, a way of freedom from the exploitative tactics of oppressive governments that treated human flesh like property. To choose to follow Christ was to be restored to human dignity, to the image of God, to be “twice born,” living the soul’s life from one’s truest self. This was known as salvation. It was to opt out of becoming a commodity, to become what Jesus called, “free.”
Early America was a fertile ground for the commodification of Christianity. When Jefferson opened up free enterprise for religion, denominations appeared as numerous as the cereal boxes in our modern grocery store aisles, each claiming to have cornered the market on goodness, with specialized ingredients of salvation, one of a kind differences in doctrinal belief, each one claiming to be the right one for you. Many developed their own boards and agencies modeled after the US Government, their own set of publishing houses, schools, line of churches and ordination processes for its clergy, of varying degrees from what is known as low to high church. And then the non-denominations came, and so on. The intention, of course, was rooted in something true, to all become effective systems for the salvation of the world. But with competition as the driving force, well, you get the idea, from Fruit Loops to Fiber Bran, a vast spectrum of brand mayhem, all claiming to have cornered the market on salvation. The process of branding Christianity evolved over time into the multi million dollar industry of church.
Some call this period of American history, the Great Disenchantment, whenever mystery, spirit and soul are locked up, taken hostage or, as in the case of the great Spirit keepers, the Native Americans, warehoused and decimated, in favor of the progress of the powerful. In Rock and Roll, church or in any realm where spirit and industry meet, there seems to be a template in our American history about how things get done in the world. At some point along the way, many of us reach our breaking point, our disenchantment threshold, and simply fall out, sputter out, spin out of the brand life, crashing, at last, into a thing called the soul. It often feels like failure when it happens, but it is, in fact, the greatest thing that could possibly happen to you, falling into your soul.
When it happens, it’s not so much that we are to run screaming from anything that resembles a brand, or chastise those (all of us) who have to function in a branded world, rather, we learn to live from a truer center, sinking more deeply into the roots of the soul, learning the difference between magic and mystery.
Strangely, back to the strangeness of becoming a preacher, it does still happen in the church, this birthing ground of the soul’s life in the world. In churches where mystery, soul and spirit are still kept alive in the here and now, anywhere we are searching honestly for the Word made flesh. And it is the primary reason for the church’s existence, to offer freedom to the soul as an alternative to being suspended in a branded life.
“and you will know the truth and the truth will make you free.” (John 8:32)
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