Shame on You

Blogpost #3

by Alexus Marx, Tyler Jones, Eric Deeter, Nicole Ivancovich, Michelle Rubbert, Abby Smith

Reconstruction Through Wounds

As lament allows us the space to examine the pieces that were left from the deconstruction of our views, how do we begin to piece together what remains? As we courageously allowed ourselves to rest in our own Holy Saturday, not running from the discomfort, but rather experiencing being undone; how do we begin the slow healing process together in community? It is through our ability to bear the pain of looking at these wounds and being empowered by the boundary breaking and radical love of God that allows us to experience ourselves as resurrected bodies. Though these resurrected bodies may not be healed to completion, they have utilized the wounds of our trauma to create new life.

Trauma, in its very nature, is not something that we “get over.” It stays with us in our bodies and informs how we live in the world. It also invites us to seek the role of the divine in the process of continuing to live after having experienced death. Shelly Rambo, in an interview with Theology Today, explains that through Jesus’ sacrifice, “the promise is that love can never be extinguished” (Copeland, Jones, Rambo, & Rivera, 2011, p. 227). In Jesus’ scarred hands, we see the perfect symbol of a body after trauma.

When Jesus appeared to Thomas, Jesus guided Thomas to physically touch his wounds in order to fully embrace what it meant that love conquered death. Jesus’ scars did not disappear but were a witness to the suffering (Copeland et. al., 2011). Those wounds were a testament to Jesus’ not letting death have the last word. Here we see the exemplification of “witnessing.” Not only is having a God who can witness us in our suffering and be present even in our darkest places important, but it is also crucial to realize that God sees our resurrected bodies and helps us to continually observe how our wounds give us the strength to continue our resistance to death.

In regards to the trauma narrative of oppressed people groups, Menakem clearly displays this understanding through his story of his Grandmother’s hands. Menakem’s grandmother helps him make sense of the state of her hands by explaining that her hands developed a thicker skin due to the repeated trauma that her hands endured working with cotton (Menakem, 2017). Through Menakem’s story, we are reminded that our bodies remember historical trauma and that we’re still responding to it; even when we are not quite sure why his grandmother’s hands forever bore the scars of slavery, yet were molded into a sign of strength. The trauma is not just washed away, it stays with us, in our bodies, in our souls. However, there is hope in the reconstruction.

The process of reconstruction does not have a clear moment of completion. Reconstruction is not about being completely new, changed, or healed from all wounds. It is the repeated process of witnessing the wounds inflicted on us and the wounds we have inflicted on others and allowing the fragments of our brokenness to be spun into something new. As we build our own awareness of our trauma, it is essential to be able to bear witness to one another in community. Reconstruction, as Menakem informs us, begins with our own awareness of our traumatized bodies (the witnessing of our trauma) and learning a resilience to discomfort in order to continue our path of growth. Menakem (Menakem, 2017) implores us to inhabit our bodies as a form of radical love for ourselves and for others; even going so far as saying that we must radically love ourselves before we can begin to radically love others.

Often, when we begin rebuilding these new belief structures, we want to go back and throw away all of our old ideas and views that we once held so tightly. We don’t want anyone to know the things we wrote on Myspace in 2007, or the harmful jokes we told as our younger selves. We don’t want others to know the ways in which we may have caused harm or the ways in which we may have participated in harm caused toward another. Yet, Menakem reminds us of the importance of drawing our minds back to those places that we were before we underwent deconstruction; for those are the places that will create resilience in us as we continue to move toward our lifelong reconstruction. Instead of throwing out everything, increasing the size of our containers allows us to begin to work with past experiences to move forward, to rebuild the map. Reconstruction is not a one time thing where once you rebuild all is well. Reconstruction is a lifelong journey as you continue to process through your body the harm that was caused and as you continue to change old thinking and patterns of behavior. So, if the question is, are we ever finished re-constructing? We say: probably not.

Bibliography

Copeland, Shawn, Serene Jones, Shelly Rambo, and Mayra Rivera. “‘Theologians Engaging Trauma’ Transcript.” Theology Today 68, no. 3 (2011): 224–37.

Menakem, Resmaa. My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized trauma and the pathway to mending our hearts and bodies. Las Vegas, NV: Central Recovery Press, 2017.

Rambo, Shelly. Spirit and Trauma: A Theology of Remaining. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010.

Rah, Soong-Chan. Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Trouble Times. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015.

“Reconstruct.” In Oxford Online Dictionary. Oxford University Press, 2020. https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/reconstruct.