Soul
Wounds
“Sometimes
people get the mistaken notion that spirituality is a separate
department of life, a penthouse of existence. But rightly understood,
it is a vital awareness that pervades all realms of our being.”
David
Steindl-Rast
The events of this week
have shaken me, as they have most people in America. The sight of Dr.
Ford giving her testimony before that Senate Committee, speaking in a
voice vibrating with anxiety, unearthed memories of my teenaged self,
and the attempted rape that happened to me at seventeen. I reacted to
that assault, as I do with most unexpected insults, with absolute
rage. I was so furious that my anger propelled me out of the
situation, and even caused me to threaten the young man with death if
I ever laid eyes on him again. I told no one, especially my parents.
My father was not a man to mess with—a true mountain man, he was
not above taking the law into his own hands. I have thought this week
about how that assault affected me throughout my life. I could write
a book about all the ways, one being activation of the same kind of
panic attacks that Dr. Ford described.
But, what I want to write
about this morning is not my particular attempted rape story, but the
ways that individuals and societies respond to such events. My
response was “fight.” Dr. Ford's response was “flight.” For
many people, however, the response is “freeze;”they are
immobilized. The sympathetic nervous system reacts instantly, and
responses are automatically activated in one of those three ways. I
think the personality of the person has a lot to do with which
response the body chooses—fight, flight or freeze. What I can tell
you about it is this: in that moment, you are physically stronger
than at any other time, and you are singularly focused on survival.
Everything in your body that can get you out of the situation is
hyped and energized, and everything extraneous shuts down. The
memory of the event is fused for life in the hippocampus portion of
the brain—vivid in detail. It's like the day the shuttle exploded,
or the towers came down—everyone holds those images as vividly now
as when they happened. You don't forget. You can't.
Is this moment in our
collective life something apart and separate? I don't believe so. I
don't imagine that it is part of some huge conspiracy. I believe it
is a bleeding wound in the psyche and soul of humanity that keeps
coming to the surface in order to be healed. Rapes and sexual
assaults against women are two of our egregious behaviors that have
not changed since humans have been walking upright. It was happening
when we were hunter-gatherers, and it is happening today, everyday.
From time to time, a high profile rape or sexual assault will rise to
the surface of our awareness in a way we cannot ignore, and offer us
an opportunity to make corrections, to address this hideous stain on
humanity. It is not only a terrible catastrophe for the men and women
involved, it is a karmic wound on our entire species.
Our spirituality is lived
out everyday, through good times and bad. It lights up our
consciousness in times of blessedness and ruin. It is not reserved
for our holy, happy, elated experiences alone, but is also evident,
and, at times even drives, our terrifying ones. We have a moment here
and now to think about how we want to move forward—do we continue
as a species to turn a blind eye to this human travesty and continue
on as in the past? Or do we stand and address it? Spiritual courage
is essential if we want to remove this stain from our collective
soul. I pray that we move forward together.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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