Post 1: Living as If

The prompt that medium has here says, “tell your story.” How often do we hear that in our day to day? If you attend the Seattle School, some question of your story is begged at least once. The interesting thing, at least for me, is that in this discussion around Evangelical Ecotheology, something I knew nothing about until last week, I find my story.

In the article, “Living As If”, Daniel Brunner, Jennifer Butler and A.J Swoboda, engage us in a discussion around hope and lament in a refreshing way, that also intersects in a least one way or another with the stories of each group member. Chelle was right to say that we would have more trouble filtering than we would having something to say. This has proven true.

I (Hannah B) will write from notes taken during the discussion but in the end I can speak only from my own experience. We all noted various things we liked about the article. I personally loved how close the authors stayed to the Bibilcal text in a freeing and not oppressive way. Genevieve really valued the discussion around compassion fatigue and found that concept liberating from a pressure to always understand and hold the grief around us.

This appreciation moved us into a discussion around how we must move forward with hope through engaging with the other if we’ve experienced trauma. This problem being that to lean in to another as the article suggest is the exact opposite of what trauma tells the body and mind, at least in some cases. The article discusses that “active hope” requires leaning into a holy spirit and moving in the reality of a the kingdom of God. But Paige highlighted that this practice is exceptionally difficult for the traumatized brain.

We, of course, did not come up with any solution. We did however talk about what it could mean to start to have a conversation with our trauma, to bless ourselves in that process without letting those things control us. Of course it is a lot more complex than that and we were all excited to learn more in our trauma books, hopeful for more insights- but we were able to start the dialogue, at least a little bit between trauma and eco theology!