Kathleen & the Levines
Blogpost #3
by Sarah Kelley, Ellie Bosworth. Jessie Murray, Jen Lee, Lisa Lamarche, & Emma Groppe
March 6, 2020
Witnessing the Dark Night of the Soul
A journey into the dark night of the soul often begins with a turning inward, or a turning back in order to begin to heal from trauma.¹ In the human experience of suffering and trauma, we linger in the space of silence and disorientation. For a while, all we know is that there is a burning need to create a narrative that forges an imagination for something different. This can feel like a blind journey of making meaning in the dark, through an act of speech, or a simple shift in the body. An encounter is formed through this journey, that requires a witness unto self and with another to bear the pain and the process alongside us. The movement of trying to grasp something in the dark stirs an imagination for what could be, even if it feels unformed and unattainable.
Hope appears murky and ineffable in suffering but movement of any kind reframes the narrative. O’Connor describes the act of expressing poetry in Lamentations as a process of grief.² The act of speaking names an event and is hope in its rawest form. A voice rises from the depths of silence, forging creative energy, and wholeness of a person or a people, in the midst of pain as one of power. In the location of paralysis and silence, the power of a witness “lies in the capacity to imagine life where it cannot be envisioned as such.”³
God acts as a peculiar kind of witness in overwhelming silence but not in absence of presence, according to O’Connor.⁴ The silence opens an intimate space for suffering to be named to its deepest extremity. The divine restraint allows for space to grieve. On the other hand, for Rambo, witness is the Spirit that travels with one to the depths and remains in the open wound after a trauma event has passed, blurring the line between death and life.⁵ The power of a witnessing presence becomes clear in its ability to “make visible what is rendered invisible.”⁶ She uses the words of Keller who finds Spirit intrinsically tied to the movement of “bodies, flesh and breath,” which affirms the stories of the body.⁷
In an interview with late artist, Gabisile Nkosi, Karen Buckenham, did a study of how women find a sense of home in their bodies and ‘becoming’ through their creativity. Nkosi’s story is a powerful example of a woman’s ability to heal herself from great trauma through mindfulness, art and witness. In the process of reforming a wounded narrative, “healing occurs when that story is told, retold, reframed, reinterpreted. The person forms a new narrative about herself and the world.”⁸
Rambo expresses that definable life in trauma is beyond imagination and must be reworked in new forms.⁹ The body work that releases trauma which Levine discusses can be considered a somatic expression of art that retells the self its own story.¹⁰ In a similar way, “In retelling her story, over and over again, in her art, then in words, to herself and to others, Nkosi was able to heal.”¹¹ Rambo insists that for the work of healing, “the capacity for imagination…and giving new form to remains in the aftermath of death,” is essential for survival.¹² She stretches the imagination to consider a love that persists through death in life, not just life after death, and its transformation to all who encounter suffering.
Endnotes:
- Stephen K. Levine, Poiesis: The Language of Psychology and the Speech of the Soul (London: Jessica Kingsley, 2009), 24.
- Kathleen M. O’Connor, Lamentations and the Tears of the World (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2007), 95.
- Shelly Rambo, Spirit and Trauma: A Theology of Remaining (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 123.
- O’Connor, Lamentations, 85.
- Rambo, Spirit and Trauma, 124
- Ibid. 123.
- Ibid.122.
- Karen Buckenham, “Creativity and Spirituality: Two Threads of the Same Cloth,” Religion & Theology 18 (2011): 56–76, doi:10.1163, 70.
- Rambo, Spirit and Trauma, 124.
- Peter A. Levine, In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness (Barkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2010), 158.
- Buckenham, “Creativity and Spirituality,” 70.
- Rambo, Spirit and Trauma, 123.
Bibliography
Buckenham, Karen. “Creativity and Spirituality: Two Threads of the Same Cloth.” Religion & Theology 18 (2011): 56–76, doi:10.1163. 70.
Levine, Peter A. In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2010.
Levine, Stephen K. Poiesis: The Language of Psychology and the Speech of the Soul. London: Jessica Kingsley, 2009.
O’Connor, Kathleen M. Lamentations and The Tears of the World. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2007.
Rambo, Shelly. Spirit and Trauma: A Theology of Remaining. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010.
