Suffering, Remaining & Witness

I was delighted to see that Nancy Schreck, OSF drew upon the work of Shelly Rambo in her 2014 LCWR Keynote address.  I have been reading (and re-reading) Rambo's Spirit and Trauma: A Theology of Remaining (2010 Westminster John Knox Press) these days. I first used Rambo's book for a paper I wrote on the ministry of reconciliation with trafficked persons. I'm now using it as part of my thesis work (today in fact .... it sits open before me as I procrastinate in my research with this blog post!)

It was interesting to read Schreck apply Rambo's work on trauma to the place where women religious find themselves today.

This shifting within religious life and in world events has taken us to what I call a middle space. We find ourselves in this place of both creativity and disorientation. Much of what was is gone, and what is coming is not yet clear. ... 

I am greatly helped in this next section by the work of Shelly Rambo and her book Spirit and Trauma: A Theology of Remaining. Rambo speaks about a theology of remaining in difficult places because "when you enter certain worlds, they do not let you go."  

Though her work is with trauma survivors and in no way do I want to diminish the aspect of trauma, I do think some parallels with or experience can be drawn. ... 

The task of "remaining" in this uncertain place is to pay attention to the reality that does not go away. In this experience all of our theological categories are re-defined: concepts like love, divine presence, incarnation, and world view are reshaped. Knowledge, truth, and experience of our world are transformed, placed on much more fragile terrain because of the radical disruption ... 

What we try to do in the middle space is to describe events that shatter all that one knows about the world and the familiar ways of operating within it. What if from this place we simply witness to and provide testimony about this experience, with special attention to truths that often lie buried and are covered over. ... 

In this middle space that is what we do: we call attention to things, things others might bury, or are afraid to face. That is why I say, however long the night we will be faithful and we will speak about what we are learning in the middle space. We trust Holy Mystery revealed in our midst. (Excerpt, Schreck, pages 7-10)

I need to think and pray into that some more, especially as it relates to my experience as a woman religious.

I've certainly been thinking and praying with a heavy heart today about the immense (human induced) suffering in our world today. And I mean, quite literally, today. A friend recently posted a very poignant list she's been carrying around with her these days: "Ferguson (police state, Black Man Walking), Gaza, Ukraine, Malaysian Air Flt 17, Refugee kids fleeing violence in Central America, Yazidi's fleeing the Islamic State, The Islamic State, Syria, Afghanistan, Ebola ..." No doubt you have your own (similar) list. It seems to be growing by the day.  So much violence, oppression, death, and trauma being caused to human beings by other human beings. One can feel paralyzed, helpless, or even complicit.  Our globalized media savvy reality means that we are present to this suffering on one (superficial/virtual) level, even though the vast majority of us are removed in our privileged spaces of comfort and safety. In my case, I think that's at the root of much of my own sense of being uncomfortable in my own skin as human induced suffering rages on and seemingly spreads. Removed as I/we are from the reality of suffering, I worry that it becomes easier to ignore or fail to act against it, thereby fueling more suffering.

Which is where I find Shelly Rambo's work so helpful:

In our current world, we are witnessing ongoing atrocities and different manifestations of suffering. The invisible forces of global capital and the undetectable effects of new wars and their justifications demand that theological accounts of suffering attend to the elisions constituting traumatic suffering. Although some may say that all 'suffering is suffering,' there are different expressions of that suffering and its effects that press for renewed theological articulation. I understand this as the increased invisibility of suffering and the power of its erasure. The discourse of trauma engages these invisible realities, continually calling attention to what falls outside the lines of what is, or can be, represented. The challenge of theological discourse is to articulate a different orientation to suffering that can speak to the invisibility, gaps, and repetitions constituting trauma.... 

A theology of the middle Spirit can help us rethink the theological discourse about suffering, given its new unique dimensions in trauma. Bessel van der Kolk acknowledges that one of the primary effects of trauma is a crisis of the human spirit. This crisis refers to a complete loss of meaning and trust in the world. ... How does a theology of the Spirit meet this crisis of spirit? ... 

I have started to envision practices patterned after this testimony, practices of tracking and sensing that propel us to recognize suffering amid its multiple elisions. .... 

The tracking and sensing, then, not only unearth and give theological significance to the unknown and unutterable within human experience, but these practices also testify to something of who we understand God to be. The work of the witnesses is to track the undertow and to sense life. But this witness is, as well, a testimony that runs deeper than we might imagine, to the nature of divine love. In the middle, divine love is witnessed in its remaining. ...The work of tracking and sensing is sanctifying work, the work of making love visible at the point where it is most invisible. 

If we read this sacred story as a story of survival, we are pressed to think about what it means to remain in the aftermath of a death that escapes our comprehension. To witness this sacred story is also to receive it for the truth that it tells: love remains, and we are love's witnesses. ... 

From this space, a different vision of life can be glimpsed. It is life as remaining. This transformation, this redemption in the abyss of hell, is not about deliverance from the depths but, instead, about a way of being in the depths, a practice of witnessing that sense life arising amid what remains. The middle story is not a story of rising out of depths, but a transformation of the depths themselves. 

(Excerpt, Shelly Rambo, Spirit and Trauma: A Theology of Remaining, 169-172)

A lot of words, many of them big theology words. But really, if I am even beginning to understand their power, I think it is summed up best by these two contrasting photos that have come out of Fergusson:

Top: Violence, suffering, and trauma.
Bottom: Witness, remaining, and healing.

A White Catholic girl goes to the movies .... thoughts on race inspired by The Butler

This afternoon I went to the movies to see The Butler. This was one of the films I wanted to see when I was on vacation at the beach, but I'm glad that I waited to see it until I got home to Chicago.  Seeing the film at my local theater in the heart of Hyde Park, just down the street from President Obama's house, and perhaps most importantly as one of only a few White folks in a predominantly African American audience, was a privileged cultural experience. Let me explain, as best I can, some of my complicated reflections on race inspired by the film and the film watching experience.

First of all, let's admit it, White folks rarely write about race.  We rarely think about race.  This is part and parcel of the undeniable (yet often denied) reality of White privilege.  We don't write/think/talk about race because we don't have to. Fortunately, I was privileged to be able to take a course at CTU last semester on the ethics of power and racial justice.  It gave me a framework and language to use to explore my own experiences of race and White privilege as well as the ethical imperative of naming this reality if we are ever to arrive at anything close to racial justice and equality.

One of the preeminent Catholic moral theologians who is writing about these issues is Fr. Bryan Massingale. I HIGHLY recommend his book Racial Justice and the Catholic Church. Not only is it brilliant, thought provoking and challenging, it's also incredibly well written and easy to read.  One of the biggest concepts I took away from Fr. Massingale is the power of lament and his assertion that because we experience racism viscerally, or at the "gut" level, we can't arrive at racial justice just through rational thought or discussion. In his words:

Thus, I believe that we Catholic ethicists need to lament the ambiguity and distortions of our history and their tragically deforming effect on ourselves.  We need to lament, mourn, and grieve our history. ... Lament has the power to challenge the entrenched cultural beliefs that legitimate privilege.  It engages a level of human consciousness deeper than logical reason.  Lamenting can propel us to new levels of truth seeking and risk taking as we grieve our past history and strive to create an ethical discourse that is more reflective of the universality of our Catholic Faith.

Lament. As a White girl watching the violent tragedies of hate in the film, from the Jim Crow South to lynching to attacks on the freedom riders, it was hard not to feel a visceral feeling in my gut.  Yet, as someone born after these events in 1972, it is also tempting to think that this isn't about me.  I'm not responsible.  And yet, this is my history, our history, and it does indeed have tragically deforming effects on each and every one of us.  We need to lament, mourn and grieve our history, and stories like The Butler help us to do this.  We also need to celebrate the victories, the courage, the ways each of us big and small works to promote racial justice in our lives and communities.  The recent commemoration of the March on Washington is one example, and anyone who has visited the MLK memorial in Washington, D.C. cannot help but be moved.

I realized this afternoon that living here in Hyde Park is really the first time in my entire life that I have not lived in a predominantly White neighborhood.  While I did attend a racially mixed high school, I grew up in a very White suburb.  In fact, when my parents first bought their house in Bowie, Maryland, the developer refused to sell to African American home buyers.  It wasn't until the PG County Open Housing law passed in 1967 (thanks in no small part to the hard work of my Dad who was on the County Council, something to celebrate indeed) and the Federal Fair Housing Act in 1968 that the developers were forced to sell homes to qualified Black buyers. By then, of course, most of the houses had been sold to White buyers.  Hence, my very White childhood.

Last semester, I reflected on this part of my history for my paper in the course on the ethics of power and racial justice.  I reached a bit deeper into this history when I remembered that the suburban house of my childhood was built on the grounds of a former plantation.  This means that I played on land where generations of African Americans were forced as slaves to farm the land, care for the horses, and run the manor house.  A little bit of research helped me discover that when slaves were freed by the 1865 Maryland constitution, forty-one people, aged 2 to 75, were held in captivity on the very land where I was raised. This brings our sordid history closer to home.

And it is not all in the past.  As I continued ethical reflection on my childhood home, I realized that while I/my family never owned slaves, we continue to this very day to benefit from racist housing policies that prevented the descendants of slaves from buying homes on this land.  Because my White parents were able to buy a reasonably priced house, they gained home equity.  This enabled them to buy a larger house when I, the fifth child, was born a decade later.  This equity helped pay for my college education. We sold the house after my mother passed away, but we are still benefiting today. As my siblings and I help my father navigate his later years, we are comforted by the fact that he is able to access quality care and senior housing because of the proceeds of the sale of this house.  This too is White privilege. Our experience of course is not isolated.  Our nation's history of racist housing policies is why there is such a continuing racial wealth gap today. 

Another Catholic moral theologian, Mary Elizabeth Hobgood, writes that those of us who benefit from White privilege are "accountable for understanding how racism advantages [us] at the expense of others." This, she says, is "a lifelong task of gaining religious awareness and engaging in moral action."  I am not writing this post to lay a guilt trip on myself, my family, or anyone else.  Rather, I seek to take the next steps in coming to grips with my own privilege, to engage and take responsibility for my own advantages, at the gut level, so that I can increase my own awareness and walk the path towards racial justice. And, if by putting words to some of this messy journey I can help someone else on theirs, all the better.  This is, after all, a communal journey.  Racism does not happen in a vacuum.

Earlier I mentioned that my present neighborhood is a new racial experience for me, being a racial minority of sorts in a predominantly African American neighborhood.  It's true.  I realize that with the exception of a few brief periods in London and Jersey City during my novitiate, I've always lived in Cities/neighborhoods where most people look like me. 

I'm coming to appreciate this time of living on the South Side of Chicago as a cultural experience.  In many ways, its refreshing.  I've started attending a predominantly African American Catholic parish where I feel welcomed, even if it is a different style of worship than I am used to.  I felt privileged watching The Butler with a mostly Black audience.  I loved hearing some of the comments, the moments of laughter, the silence and held breath at poignant moments, and the heart felt applause at the end.  It made the entire movie watching experience that much more meaningful for me.  Living here also makes me face my racism and recognize my own White privilege more often.  That's tough, but it's also an opportunity, and it's one for which I am very grateful.