New Freedom Fighters - Wounded Healers to Heal the World

Every now and then - in fact I am glad to say rather more frequently these days - I come across someone else's work that makes me say YEESS! At last the message is getting through - my idea is becoming part of the Zeitgeist, the Spirit of the Moment. And today is one of those days, when I stumbled upon a brilliant talk by Rick Axtell Associate Professor of Religion and College Chaplain at Centre, a Top 50 liberal arts college located in the “centre” of Kentucky in Danville. He was addressing the graduate class of 2011, on May 22nd this year, with a talk on Wounded Healers.

Do read the full transcript. Axtell starts with the story of the courageous Freedom Fighters, fighting for racial equality in America 50 years ago, an event being celebrated this month. He tells the biblical story of Jacob and his ladder, an archetypal story of the human journey, and he talks of the Wounded Healer of Dutch Roman Catholic Priest Henri Nouwen. And he ends with a plea to all the graduates to go out into the world as Wounded Healers to build a better future. Here is a story from a Fr. Daniel Berrigan given in the talk:

"There once was a child who used to play only in the front yard, where everyone was like himself. One day,…he was sent…into the back yard. Back yard? He hadn't known there was one. A revelation! Tanners, shoemakers, alleys, gutters, children, washwomen, markets, flower carts, beggars. The child sat on the back stoop, half frightened, totally fascinated...
His exile ended, as such things will. He was called back indoors, and on into the front yard.
He went in with a strange new look on his face. He knew something for the first time.
It had come to him with the unpredictability of lightning, with the logic of nature, of water and sun, of the opening of a door.
He knew now, THAT A FRONT YARD EXISTED BECAUSE A BACK YARD EXISTED -- front will have back, rich will have poor, master will have slave, pride will have fall, blood will have blood."

Rick continues: "Here is the wound that leads to life. Fr. Henri Nouwen writes in his book, The Wounded Healer, that the outward journey toward healing of others requires an inward journey that recognizes the sufferings of our time in our own unsatisfied cravings, in our own alienation, in our shared human condition.
This is the starting point on the journey into service.
And only when it comes from a heart wounded by the suffering we seek to heal will service be authentic."