H E A L I N G ▫ A R T S
NAMELESS
by Tiffany Nicole Fletcher
The one who owes us no answer
The one who does not fear darkness
The one who holds the hours
The one who says when—
The one who knows before,
the one who is still there after.
The one who gives shape to silence who
makes a womb out of it
the one who daily pulls down a
curtain of night—
and with holy brush strokes
to canvas of sky
each morning creates
a new pattern of light.
I’ve always noticed people’s hands. I’ve always been drawn to hands and the stories they tell. When I was younger, my parents’ hands seemed very large to me. My mother’s hands: long and elegant, also strong. Hands that had to be resourceful, move quickly, figure it out. My father’s hands were different—darker, with wider fingers and a gentleness of feature but sternness of movement. The hands of someone who has held many books, turned many pages.
I remember my grandmother’s hands looking like they told a world of stories. These were the hands of a creative woman: hands that made clothing for my mother and her siblings, hands that made warm homemade bread and famed guava and coconut tarts, hands that churned fresh butter; these are the hands that turned pieces of her wedding dress into christening gowns for her children. These hands have been moving daily for 99 years this November. Though beset with pain now, they are still going.
There are other hands. My spiritual director’s hands holding mine in hers as she prays over me. The feel of her finger on my forehead when she anointed me with oil. The hands that lowered me into my baptism pool. The patient and skillful hands of the surgeon who repaired my wrist. The kind hands of the nurse who dressed me after the procedure, when I couldn’t dress myself. The devoted hands of the friend who cared for me as I recovered.
My other friends’ hands the first time I saw them holding their firstborn children. My longtime friend’s empty hands when she told me that she had lost another child to miscarriage. My first love’s hands in his casket. Looking just like I knew them to be and also telling the story that he was not there. There was no life in those hands. His living hands were not like that.
I look at my own hands and I think of every person they have held. Every face they have touched. Every person they have offered Reiki to. All the things they have carried for me. How they have worked for me over so many days, how many things they enable me to do. We love with our hands. We can use our hands for love.
Very recently, I went to Sunday service and during the beginning of Communion, I glanced up at the monitor in front of me and I saw, close-up, these gentle, brown, female hands lifting the chalice and breaking the wafer. They looked like mine. They were the hands of the Indian-American woman minister at the church. I realized that I had never seen the brown hands of a woman – hands that look just like mine – doing this sacred task. This seemingly little thing was so significant for me, in a way that I hadn’t anticipated. All day after, I kept seeing the image of her hands in my mind. Hands like mine. They were hands like mine.
***
by Tiffany Nicole Fletcher
***
There is
the belief that freed you—
Bright and shining,
this is the new sight
we sing of.
The veil fallen
now every cloud parted, and
there is only the empowered you left.
The you that is unshackled.
The you that has no intention
of turning back.
I read a quote a few months ago and it has stayed with me. Richard Rohr writes:
“We cannot change the world except insofar as we have changed ourselves. We can only give away who we are. We can only offer to others what God has done in us. We have no real mental or logical answers. We must be an answer. We only know the other side of the journeys that we have made ourselves…All the conflicts and contradictions of life must find a resolution in us before we can resolve anything outside ourselves. Only the forgiven can forgive, only the healed can heal, only those who stand daily in need of mercy can offer mercy to others. At first it sounds simplistic and even individualistic, but it is precisely such transformed people who can finally effect profound and long-lasting social change.”
In this quote, I found the expression of my motivation for the work I have devoted my life to. We stand in the midst of a world in tremendous need of healing, social change, relational repair, and transformation of systems of power. But every broken system that exists is simply the sum of the people in it, and so it is my belief that our hope for a better world will be found starting at the individual level.
We must start with ourselves. The things that bother us about the world or other people are likely a call first to us, to become the change we wish to see. To embody it first within our own lives. And then, as Richard Rohr says, we become capable of truly creating change. What sense does it make to work to change the larger world in some way if we haven’t first sought to effect that specific change in our own life? It’s there that often requires the most courage.
I believe that we are all called to effect healing in some way within our sphere of influence and that we are given daily opportunities to do this. We are called to attend to our own healing, and then to be agents of love within our relationships and in the community where we find ourselves. (Which we will automatically be if we have effected transformation within ourselves.) If everyone attended to their sphere of influence in this way, the world would certainly be renewed.
Transformed people will transform the world. But changing ourselves is not easy; it might be the hardest work we ever do. Which is why everyone isn’t rushing to do it. It’s easier to chase other things. But I know that it is possible, that it is necessary, and that there is freedom to be found when we are able to access the healing our life is calling us to. When we find that healing, we not only bring ourselves to a better place, we also advance our family, our community, our ancestry, our bloodline, and the world as a whole. This is the real work of our lives. We can acquire titles, money, and fame, but those things cannot accomplish this work for us. The healing we need will still be there in the background of our lives until we address it.
Spiritual practices like meditation and prayer do help us heal and change. There is healing to be found, even though our personal and societal challenges can often seem dark and intractable. There is healing available and when you start seeking after it, you will see that the love of God is constantly conspiring to help you bring it to pass. God is near.
*Quote source: Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation, “There is Nothing to Regret (God Uses Everything in Our Favor,” June 12, 2017, Center for Action and Contemplation.
Surrender can be one of the hardest things to do. Yet, it is one of the most powerful and effective spiritual postures there is. We are not meant to carry our burdens alone; we are meant to partner with God (the Divine, Spirit, Goddess – whatever you call your Higher Power or the Source of all Being) as we face the burdens of life, turning over our troubles to God regularly lest we become weighed down from trying to carry more than we are able to. Life involves challenge, which is hard on the spirit, so we must also have a regular means of release and cleansing for our spirit. Surrender is more than necessary.
We are not meant to carry our burdens alone.
The action of surrender is a choice. It’s an inner decision to release and let go, willfully handing things over to the God who loves us, to that which surely desires what is best for us. God can be trusted. And even if you don’t have trust in God, you can still surrender. It is not a feeling or some miraculous moment where the heavens will part, as much as it is a decision. You can keep on choosing it over and over again, as many times as you need to in order to maintain your peace. It’s an action we are meant to take regularly—even several times a day.
It can be helpful to use imagery or tactile methods to symbolize your act of surrendering. For example:
Whatever the method, surrender often.
Whatever the method, surrender often. Many of us are carrying around (and being weighed down by) things we needed to surrender a long time ago. Outdated beliefs, untrue ideas about ourselves and/or others, pain from the past, baggage from past relationships, unprocessed loss, etc. The less we surrender on a regular basis, the more these things will build up.
We tend to resist surrender. Perhaps because the very act of surrender is affirmation of the uncomfortable truth that there is much we aren’t in control of in life. It’s often easier to believe that we are fully responsible when bad things happen in our lives (that it’s because we have failed in some way), because that idea at least maintains that we are in complete control. The truth is that we only have so much agency. There are forces beyond our control, things far beyond our understanding.
Do you want to access the peace of God? Surrender that which is beyond your control.
Surrender can be hard, but it ultimately brings peace. Do you want to access the peace of God? Surrender that which is beyond your control. One of the best prayers I’ve ever heard is simply: “You are God and I am not.” Surrender puts you in your rightful place in relation to God. We are not meant to live as if we have the full power of God. We are meant to do what we can and then release the rest to the Great Knowing, the Comforter, the one who longs to help us and give us peace.
