Sermon Delivered at Church of the Good Shepherd
Fort Lee, New Jersey
Sunday, June 27, 2021, at 8:00 and 10:00 a.m.
By the Rev. Stephen C. Galleher
The Three Causes of Suffering
IIIa: Low Self-Esteem’s Partner: Trauma
“God does not delight in the death of the living. For he created all things so that they might exist; the generative forces of the world are wholesome, and there is no destructive poison in them.” (Wisdom of Solomon 1:13-15)
“You have turned my wailing into dancing; *
you have put off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy.”
Therefore, my heart sings to you without ceasing; *
O Lord my God, I will give you thanks for ever.” (Psalm 30)
I have been suggesting for the past three weeks that there are three fundamental causes or conditions that lie behind most of our woes. By woes, I mean stresses, strains, pains, disappointments, heartache, loss, quarrels, resentments…the list is long. I wish to lump all these woes under the category of suffering.
Suffering. Suffering, we have suggested, comes from three main things:
- From our disinclination, refusal, or inability to accept things as they come and as they are. Life presents us with thousands of things that are not so agreeable to us, many outside our sphere of control, some of our own making, some of our partial making. I call all this non-acceptance. The first cause of suffering.
- From our constant temptation to wish or want to be in somebody else’s shoes, to have what someone else has, to take what someone else has. And our sadness, even sometimes resentment over someone giving more attention or devotion to someone other than ourselves. This second cause of suffering I call envy (sometimes it takes the form of ravenous jealousy).
- And all of these forms of non-acceptance can stem from a low view we hold of ourselves. So many of us harbor strong, medium or sometimes (mercifully) mild self-criticisms that get in the way of our enjoyment of life. In a word, low self-esteem can lead us into unhappiness and sometimes keep us there!
This morning I want to unfold this low self-esteem a little more; in other words, dig a little deeper and see what lies behind or under so much of our self-criticism. In a word, I want to reflect with you on the phenomenon of trauma. I submit that trauma is the most avoided, ignored, denied, misunderstood and untreated cause of human suffering.
Trauma. I bet you think that trauma is something you haven’t really experienced. We tend to hold much too narrow a view of trauma. What do you think?
We are clear that trauma can be caused by:
- Childhood sexual or physical abuse;
- Childhood abandonment
- Wartime injuries or other physical traumas (known broadly as PTSD)
- A major catastrophe or natural disaster
But cannot trauma also be a way of looking at:
- Death of a parent, especially before becoming an adult
- Divorce of our parents when we were children
- Sexual identity issues
- Underachievement, even failure, in school (many professionals are studying links between trauma and ADD and ADHD)
- Loss of a job, especially when fired
- Loss of a vital relationship
- Divorce
The important point about broadening trauma to include this latter list is that few of us can have escaped trauma at some point in our lives. (I am not talking about stress. Traumas are first-cousins of stress; but surely not all stress is traumatic or stems from trauma.)
And sometimes we don’t know how to respond to other people’s trauma. Did you hear about the guy who said, “Whenever I encountered one of life’s little traumas, my dad would take me to one side and say, ‘It could be worse; you could be thrown into water twenty feet down a dark shaft.’ Bless him. He meant well!”
So, the question becomes, how have we handled our trauma? Because trauma is serious, all right. Trauma is a kind of separation from ourselves; we are ripped apart from the contented, happy people we were created to be.
Have we grown through the grief and pain or our traumas or have we buried them, tucking them away for whatever reason? We may have been told that we just don’t talk about such things. Or we may have been ashamed to look at them. So, we repress the pain.
These hidden away pains have been called a little black bag we drag behind us. What a great image. They can sit, unexamined, and as out of sight as we can stand. But are they really hidden? Don’t they really play a larger part in our lives than we might think?
Karl Jung called these items in our little black bag our shadow side, or our shadow self—that part of us we are reluctant to face and deal with. That’s really too bad for us, because a) this shadow self tends to come out one way or another—in being angry and resentment at more things that are rational to be angry over; b) in being sad and anxious over we really don’t know what; and, c) in general, of not enjoying life in the full way that we deserve to.
I wonder, too, if alcoholism and drug addiction don’t lie behind our failure to open that little black bag so many carry behind. Let’s face it, pain is something we naturally try and avoid, especially emotional and psychic pain. And a convenient way of avoiding pain is through medication, if not with reasonable medication, then through excessive drinking and the use of illegal drugs.
I used to think that prisons were full largely of people who were alcoholics and drug addicts. I still feel this way, but I have come to believe that most of those drug addicts and alcoholics are also victims of one form of trauma or another; and I wonder just where is our compassion to see the pain from such a vast number of people? Perhaps it starts with acknowledging our own pain, often deeply hidden and unacknowledged?
I believe the story of Jesus is of someone who had no fear of being with folks in their deepest pain. His presence with them—the sick, the lame, lepers, adulterers, outcasts, the forgotten—brought the message of presence, God’s presence. Perhaps it takes the grace of seeing that God is right there with us in our darkest corners, those corners that we can be too afraid to go to. If God can go there and love us there, comfort us there, then we can open our eyes, and cry there.
There is no pain too deep for God to be with. His tears have preceded us. This is what the cross is about. God sits astride us on our cross and assures us that we are with him in paradise. He endures our tragedy and assures us of our ecstasy. It’s a strange paradox, that we have to open our wounds and release the pain in order to come into the full presence of the God who has not and will not let us go. In entering into our deepest wounds, we learn the meaning of compassion and can thus share it outwards towards our fellow human beings. Compassion at home begs to be shared abroad into the world.
I was in a situation some years ago when I was required to attend a trauma workshop. I fought attending it. I had no childhood traumas that I could think of. But my excuse went unacknowledged, and I found myself with a group of about ten guys in a rec room in the bottom of a men’s dormitory.
I was the first guinea pig and so was told to try and locate any pain in my body and to lie flat on my back while the other participants held me down with their hands firmly placed on my shoulder, arms, torso and legs. I told them of a mass of sadness in my chest that I had carried for years. It felt as if this mass had a molecular reality to it. In other words, as if it were a material thing inside my body.
The leader asked some of the guys to push that mass up from my chest towards my throat and told them that on the count of three they were to raise me to a sitting position and I was to be prepared to let this mass out in the most forceful way I could.
When I was raised up, I let out a scream so loud that the people on the third floor of the building thought someone was dying. I yelled so loud that the guys holding me reared back and dropped their jaws in astonishment. I yelled like a struck banshee, and I proceeded to cry with deep, deep sobs. I do not recall ever crying so profoundly. It must have continued for at least three minutes.
I can say this. This mass of sadness left me, and it has never returned.
Trauma, sadness, deep, deep pain. God does not want us to make our home there. God wants us in the light of day, where our true selves are to be found. Embracing our own pain, whatever its origin, opens us to new and brighter levels of love. Love is like the sun that burns through the fog, dissolving it, until only vast openness, clarity and joy remain. “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God almighty, heaven and earth are full of your glory!”
Trauma and its overcoming as a road to compassion and our mission as Christians. I can think of no more pertinent conclusion than a statement by Crazy Horse, a warrior from the Lakota tribe, a statement made in 1877:
“I salute the light within your eyes
where the whole Universe dwells.
For when you are that center in you
and I am at the place within me,
we shall be one.”
Amen