Carolyn Holderread Heggen
PeaceSigns, a publication of the Peace and Justice Support Network of Mennonite Church USA, recently published the following chapel address by Carolyn Holderread Heggen, psychotherapist specializing in individual and communal trauma healing. The article caught our eye because Holderread Heggen dedicated her address to Fr. William Mahedy, a former military chaplain who experienced a “profound crisis of conscience and dedicated the rest of his life as a social worker in San Diego, starting Veterans Centers and writing profound pieces about the spiritual woundedness of Veterans.” Her talk does more than illustrate a profound “exchange of gifts” between Mennonites and Catholics seeking peace and reconciliation in the world. As we enter more deeply into the Paschal mystery during Holy Week, it also serves as an appropriate Lenten reflection.
Years ago a Vietnam Christian Vet came into my therapy office, carrying a Bible, and he said, “If you want to know what it feels like to be me, read these verses.” He started pointing to some of these verses Michele read this morning (Psalm 38). I don’t know specifically what precipitated the Psalmists despair that caused him to write these verses, but I do know that I have been told by numerous Vets that it’s a good description of what they feel like. Thousands of years after those words were written psychiatrists and psychologists came up with an official diagnosis, and a new name for an old malady, a malady as old as war itself. And in 1980 the term Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD as we commonly call it, was coined and since then has become part of our medical and lay vocabulary.
Throughout history, different names have been used to describe the effects of the emotional and spiritual pain people who have been asked to kill experience. Continue reading “Naming the pain: a Lenten reflection on transforming the wounds of war”
The American Benedictine Academy has chosen as the theme of its 2012 annual meeting, “Seek Peace and Pursue It: Monasticism in the Midst of Global Upheaval.” The conference will be held at St. Scholastic Monastery in Duluth MN. Bridgefolk board member Weldon Nisly will be one of the featured speakers. (Those planning to attend the Bridgefolk conference in Minnesota in late July should note that the ABA conference is the following weekend, approximately three hours away.)
A keynote address by Br. Jeffrey Gros, FSC, to the 2011 National Workshop on Christian Unity last May has recently come to our attention. In it he called attention to the use of footwashing at a historic service of repentance and reconciliation, in which representatives of the Lutheran World Federation confessed 16th-century persecution of Anabaptists as a sin. This “icon” should serve as a model for planning similar commemorations as Christians around the world mark the 500-year anniversary of the Protestant Reformation in 2017, he said. 