I lay on the massage table covered by a flannel sheet. Warmth surrounded me as Darlene gently drew my right foot out from under the cozy covers and slowly began to turn it from right to left, flexing it in the process.
I had broken my heel months earlier when I fell off the four-foot wall that lines my driveway. The break was bad enough to warrant surgery.
Three months later, after my surgeon released me, my foot continued to ache and my gait was off, so I started seeing Darlene, a myofascial release specialist. The myofascial tissue is the sheath of fibrous tissues just beneath the skin that envelopes the body, separating the muscular layers. When it is constricted, our movement is limited. Thanks to Darlene’s skill, my foot was doing much better. This was to be my last visit with her. As she worked, we slipped into conversation.
A Witness Emerges
As we talked, I realized Darlene may be able help me with another issue. At times of high emotion, my throat often constricts when I try to speak. Talking becomes difficult; my breath is cut off. I asked Darlene if she thought she could help me release the cause of this constriction.
She told me that, while reviewing my chart before our appointment, she was repeatedly drawn to the area of my neck. She had to keep reminding herself, “No, it’s not Barbara’s neck, it’s her foot I am working on.”
That was the end of the footwork for the day. She began to lead me through a visualization. As she spoke, in my mind’s eye, I grew wings. The wing on the right side curved inward to stroke my throat in a healing gesture, while the left wing did nothing. This bothered me. Why wasn’t the left wing stroking my neck as the right wing was?
Darlene had me speak to the left wing.
“Why aren’t you doing anything,” I asked it.
“Oh, but I am,” said the wing. “I am serving as witness.”
I knew the wing was speaking not of Christian proselytizing, but in terms of seeing and hearing another. Clearly. Honestly. Not what you think is there, but what is truly there.
All of us need such a witness.
An Unrecognized Vocation
This experience, from almost twenty years ago, returns to me now as a usable tool in this time where communities, even families, are divided, where we tend to gather only with those who think as we do, with the like-minded serving as our security blanket.
If I have any vocation, that sense that those who go into ministry feel, it is a calling to write and a calling to practice meditative prayer. Now I see there is a third calling, one that has always been there, but I never recognized, and that is to build bridges. I credit my mother, who was always good at seeing both sides, for this calling.
When I was younger, I took this inherited ability of mine as being wishy washy. Now I see it as a strength. As a church sister said recently, when speaking from the pulpit, she is learning that “other’s stories are as sacred as (her) own.”1
My heart leapt when I heard those words. They captured a truth often forgotten today. Yet that doesn’t mean that suppressing the rights and denying the dignity of any one individual is acceptable because one person’s “story” says so. So how do we approach divides?
I don’t have an easy answer, but I do see a light calling me forward.
The Order
Someone I was talking to recently was reluctant to refer to a mutual acquaintance, a transexual man, as he. I wasn’t sure how to respond. Of course, I could have confronted the person, but that would not have been helpful. After all, to essentially identify someone as a bigot only builds walls.
I went to my neighbor Ruth to ask what she would have done in my shoes. She is a white woman with an African American daughter, so she is well versed in addressing such issues. She suggested I say, “Adam is asking that we now refer to him as he, not she, and I want to respect that. I appreciate that this can be challenging.”
I immediately saw how framing a response in this way can lead to a deeper, more sincere conversation. Who knows what bridges can be built from there?
Later, while talking to my nephew Neil, I asked him what he thought of this approach. He used to work in sales and was very good at it. He offered a further insight that I had not considered. Not only are the words we chose to say important, but the order is as well.
Consider the difference between these two statements:
“Adam is asking that we now refer to him as he, not she, and I want to respect that. I appreciate that this can be challenging.”
“I appreciate that this challenging, but Adam is asking that we now refer to him as he, not she, and I want to respect that.”
The first order opens the doors to further discussion by showing empathy for the other’s concerns. The second order risks taking a “I am better than you” turn, which likely will lead to defensiveness that stifles any dialogue.
A New Story
In their work titled The Seventh Story,2 authors Gareth Higgins and Brian McLaren explore a related concept. They identify the various stories, one by one, that people have embraced through the millenniums –– those of domination, revolution, isolation, purification, accumulation, and victimization. None of these stories provide what is ultimately needed, and so they fail.
The stories fail “because they invited every human being, who is already interdependent with every other human being, and even with the earth itself, to pretend instead that we are in a competition.” The solution, claim the authors, is a seventh story, and that is the story of reconciliation. “In the Seventh Story, human beings are not the protagonists of the world. Love is.”3
The Rev. Jason Shelton4 penned a song that points to the power of this love. The song –– “Answering the Call of Love” –– is sung today in many Unitarian Universalist churches, one of which is mine, and has become somewhat of an anthem for the national fellowship of UU churches.5
The story of reconciliation is the one I want to live; love is the call I want to answer.
A Call to Wholeness
The Gospel of Matthew (5:48) quotes Jesus as saying, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” But the word teleios in Greek, which is the language in which the gospel was written, translated as “perfect”can also be translated as “whole.”6
That is what witnessing does. It calls us to wholeness. It calls us to reconciliation. Just as we need to witness our truth to others, we need to be open to the truth of others. After all, building bridges means building from both sides, building upon that bedrock that respects the ways each of us is made in God’s image with all our God-given gifts and foibles.
Inviting people into our circles, or stepping into theirs, in a non-judgmental way, with humility even, is the way to build stronger communities. A better nation. A better world. And isn’t that ultimately what we are to do, to care for one another where care is needed, to support one another as we each find our own way to the wholeness God calls us to live, calls us to love.
Maybe someone who thinks differently from me can help me understand their motivations, perhaps even their fears, as I can help them better understand mine, and together we can find a way to address them. Together is the way we can move forward.
FOR REFLECTION: Think of the times you were able to serve as witness to truth as you know it. Were you able to speak with respect? Were you able to listen with an open heart? Within such an encounter could you see a path forward?
1 Jennifer Ciolino. Remarks at Heritage UU Church, Cincinnati, Ohio. December 3, 2023.
2 Gareth Higgins and Brian McLaren, The Seventh Story: Us, Them, and the End of Violence, (Brian D. McLaren and Gareth Higgins, 2018). https://www.theseventhstory.com/paperback
3Daily Meditations. Center of Action and Contemplation. January 29, 2024. https://cac.org/daily-meditations/the-stories-that-dont-work/
4 Jason Shelton Music https://jasonsheltonmusic.com/
5 “Answering the Call of Love” as performed by Michael Tacy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zE5IWieY2HI
6 Chris LaMountain. Northwestern University Office of Undergraduate Research. August 8, 2018. https://undergradresearch.northwestern.edu/2018/08/08/teleios/#:~:text=Teleios%2C%20as%20commonly%20translated%2C%20means,different%20connotation%20of%20wholeness%20and
Top image: Pixabay/andreas160578
Midtext image: Pixabay/Larisa Koshkina
Side image: Pixabay/Avelino Calvar Martinez
