A Beautiful Mess
For the last ten weeks or so, I have been trying to put my finger on something — a vague impression I have felt in the discussions surrounding the theological work in Kathryn Tanner’s Christ the Key, the trauma theory work by Bessel van der Kolk in The Body Keeps the Score, and the integration that Shelly Rambo brings in Spirit and Trauma.
The thought is: This seems messy.
Let me unpack a little what I mean by this statement, because there is more meaning in it than just taking the easy way out by affixing an ill thought out adjective to this work. And I am not intending to communicate that somehow the work of these three authors are unconnected, or that it is too complicated — for in some ways it is quite simple, but just… messy.
First, let’s look at van der Kolk — he communicates in chapter 13 the importance of relationships and the necessity of it for recovery. In circumstances where community is absent or harmful he says, “If the people whom you naturally turn to for care and protection terrify or reject you, you learn to shut down and to ignore what you feel.”[1] There is vulnerability in relationships, and the fear of not being safe, of being too much, and the possible rejection from our relationships could very well lead to being re-traumatized. And yet, this recovery is worked out in human processing. This latter point brings me to Rambo and Tanner’s work — there is, in both of these theologian’s work, this idea that the Spirit works through human process and their pneumatology is one that is slow — as opposed to instantaneous — and, dare I say it, messy. Tanner says this: “When human processes become Spirit-filled, they are not made more than human themselves… through his Spirit we are bound together to be a community with a Trinitarian form of life in service to others”[2]. Aside from Rambo’s important thoughts around having a witness to trauma, she brings in this idea of a “practice of attention” where there is attention to narrative in a community setting, without having one impose his own narrative on the other. In other words, there are multiple narratives — multiple stories — that exist when a community comes together, and as we approach this space of welcoming others and welcoming ourselves, we find this “middle space” where the Spirit is at work.[3] Very much like Martin Buber’s idea of a “sacred space” between two people, the stepping into the space where the Spirit is encountered is a unique experience for each person. And in the same way that van der Kolk makes the point that there is correct order of therapy — no method that is universally the “correct” way — the recovery of trauma and the work of the Spirit can be at times very messy, but stepping into this messy space can be an incredibly rich, vulnerable, and painful process but where there can be immense, and beautiful healing.
[1] Kolk, Bessel Van Der. The Body Keeps the Score. (New York: Penguin, 2014). p. 211.
[2] Tanner, Kathryn. Christ the Key. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). P. 281.
[3] Rambo, Shelly. Spirit and Trauma: A Theology of Remaining. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010). P.150.
