Recently, a workshop attendee wrote, "I would like more information on how worship can help free me from the prison of my pain and shame and guilt."
Good question. What role does worship play in the healing journey? I don't know that there is a universal answer to that question, but perhaps some aspects of my journey might resonate with some of you.
I grew up in a liturgical church--choosing as an 11 year old to continue attending, in spite of the fact that my family chose to stop going to church. I found great joy and comfort in the old words and traditions--even though, deep down, I now realize that I believed God to be powerless in the shadow of my abusers, and believed myself to be outside of the sphere of influence of this otherwise loving, and benevolent God. Church became my family of choice, my refuge and my anchor.
When, in my 50's, I came to understand the spiritual wounds I carried from my childhood, I struggled to find a name for the Holy that worked for me, because the traditional Christian "Father, Son and Holy Spirit" triggered anger that I had not known I directed at God. I tried "Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer" out for size, but they seemed too impersonal. Finally, after some weeks of rumination, I settled on "Artist, Saver (the One who saves the flawed clay pots from being flattened by the Artist--the one who sees the beauty, and not just the flaw), and the Creative Spirit"--who lives in all of us.
Having settled on names that worked for me, I then found myself straining under the weight of religious language and posturing that no longer worked for me.
I'd spent a lifetime believing myself to be inherently flawed. Now the whole notion of Original Sin was repugnant to my emerging sense of self. Along a similar vein, the character of God that I chose to believe in was not the punitive, judgmental, grudge-holding God I'd blamed for abandoning me--and so the portions of the liturgy that sounded like self-flagellation and begging God to be nice for a change and take pity on me were problematic.
I spent months and months, standing, sitting, kneeling in the pew, muttering under my breath, "I don't believe THIS prayer"; "I can't sing THIS song'; "That's not how MY God operates".
It was mighty uncomfortable. And when the preacher ended a sermon with something like, "Do you want to stay in your pain, or will you choose to trust in the God we all know loves you?" I wanted to stand up and scream," Like it is THAT easy!!!! I WISH I knew that God loves me!!!!"
But something kept drawing me back to worship. As I told my spiritual director one day, after I admitted to mentally changing the words to much of the liturgy, "I believe that one day, as I continue my healing work, I'll be sitting in the pew and I'll discover that those old words will have a new meaning for me."
And, indeed, that is happening. For example, now when I say "Our Father", I image a loving parent, of no particular gender, instead of a critical, unbending male figure. When we pray, "Give us this day" I no longer have to change it to an affirmation (You give us this day) so it doesn't feel like I am begging God to do the right thing by me. Now I understand the old words to be an affirmation of the rightness of our Creator/Creature relationship. I was created to be in relationship with God--it is what both God and I yearn for. I was born with a God shaped hole in my soul, and God takes delight in filling that with God's presence, and in giving me all the stuff of life...daily bread, light, water, hope, strength, courage, fortitude....This part of the prayer reminds me that I am not--and do not have to be--the source of my life; it is okay to need God's help. When we talk about me being a sinner, I remember that the word sinner means that I've "missed the mark" and not that I am a bad girl. And, I remember that, as a human, I'll always miss the mark--and that that is okay. If God had wanted/expected me to be perfect, God would have made me God.
A loving self-pat on the shoulder and Sherry's "Oh how very human of me" reminds me to be grateful that I now know that I am no longer in charge of keeping the world turning.
How can worship help free me from the prison of my pain and shame and guilt? For me, worship offered a sacred time and space where, held in the familiar security of a ritual that has been my sanctuary for decades, I could sort through the facets of my understanding of God, and of myself, release the ones that no longer worked, try new ones on for size, and gently hold a holy hope for the transfiguration of the old words into a new expression of my love for God and God's love for me.
I think, on some level, that my wounded inner child was checking God out, sure that if we took our anger, doubt, fear, questions and unwillingness to settle, into the 'house of God', that God would surely turn God's back on us, as we had believed before. But that didn't happen. I kept showing up. And God kept showing up, no matter how outrageous my thoughts seemed to become. And a kernel of trust began to sprout in my soul.
As Sherry likes to say, "It's not about being right or successful, but about being faithful."
As I showed myself faithful in the work of worship, I created a liminal space--a thin place--where I was able to experience and get to know the character of the God I choose to believe in. And to learn that God believes that when I was created, God didn't create junk!
Who knew???
Elaine Oxenbury
