Category: Healing meditation

Grief, Healing meditation, Trauma recovery

OUT

Jennifer Ohman-Rodriguez

Psalm 130

“Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.
    Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
    to the voice of my supplications!

 If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,
    Lord, who could stand?
But there is forgiveness with you,
    so that you may be revered.

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
    and in God’s word I hope;
my soul waits for the Lord
    more than those who watch for the morning,
    more than those who watch for the morning.

O Israel, hope in the Lord!
    For with the Lord there is steadfast love,
    and with the Lord is great power to redeem.

It is the Lord  who will redeem Israel
    from all its iniquities.” ( NRSV)

Reflection

Psalm 130 belongs to a group of psalms called “the ascent psalms.” Psalms sung as pilgrims made long journeys to the temple in ancient Jerusalem. Once at the temple, weary  after walking so far, pilgrims may have chanted these words while climbing the many steps leading into the temple. Bodies moving with lament and hope. Arms reaching for God and God’s redemption.

Ascent. A word associated with goodness. We think and speak of going up or moving forward as the best way. Moving downward, not as acceptable or desirable. As in God is up not down. Up in heaven not down here on earth. Not deeper down in the pits of our despair and pain.

Up, down, ascent, or descent are neither good nor bad movements. All movements depend on context. In the context of pain and despair we often move away from God. We turn away from all goodness because we are unable to fathom God moving with us in any direction. 

Yet God always promises to accompany us. God goes with us into every place, including life’s pits. Maybe a better directional word is out. Easing pain moves us out of despair into the experience of joy. Healing uncovers God’s ongoing presence with and in us.

Spiritual Practice: Moving

Read aloud the first two verses of Psalm 130. As you read, reach your arms out in all directions. Reach out and down. Reach out and up. Reach out and to the side.

 Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.
    Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
    to the voice of my supplications!

Read aloud verses three and four standing or sitting still.

If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,
    Lord, who could stand?
But there is forgiveness with you,
    so that you may be revered.

Read aloud verses five and six while breathing the words in and out. As you breathe listen for God within you and all around you.

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
    and in God’s word I hope;
my soul waits for the Lord
    more than those who watch for the morning,
    more than those who watch for the morning.

As you read aloud verses seven and eight, move as if you are moving toward God’s hope living within you.

O Israel, hope in the Lord!
    For with the Lord there is steadfast love,
    and with the Lord is great power to redeem.

 It is the Lord  who will redeem Israel
    from all its iniquities.

Prayer

Ascending and descending God, move your Spirit within and around me. Move me with your energy. Create healing as we dance. Amen.

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Healing meditation, Revised Common Lectionary Text, Trauma, Trauma recovery

BR O KEN

Jennifer Ohman-Rodriguez

“Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress;  my eye wastes away from grief,
 my soul and body also. For my life is spent with sorrow, and my years with sighing; my strength fails because of my misery,  and my bones waste away. I am the scorn of all my adversaries,  a horror to my neighbors, an object of dread to my acquaintances; those who see me in the street flee from me;  I have passed out of mind like one who is dead; I have become like a broken vessel.” Psalm 31:9-12 NRSV

Reflection

Words from my own journey through trauma recovery: I want to lose myself in movie after movie. Curl up in bed, eyes staring at the blank wall. Drink the leftover wine in the fridge until I no longer feel anything. Buy another dress online. Only to send it back again. Move to an island far away from all who know my story. Numb myself in anything taking a layer of pain away. Not even asking for it all to cease. Just shed the top portion of what I endure. Maybe just for an hour. Giving me a break from my broken body. From trauma’s relentless monotony.

Today I decide instead to bake. Satiate my craving for spice cookies. Or maybe just the sugar as temporary antidepressant. But also need some sort of small movement. Like smashing butter, cracking eggs, measuring vanilla, mixing it all together. Watching the separate parts form a whole. Liquid acting like glue. Bringing it all together.  

Movement grows a young child’s brain. Neurons reaching out into strings of pathways. Maybe movement can grow my brain back? My stuck, middle-aged, traumatized brain. Showing it a path out of this muck. By molding ingredients together. Making sticky cookie dough. Mending what is broken.

Healing Practice: Collecting Ideas

Buy a pack of recipe cards. Or note cards. Any size.

Write down one idea for healthy movement or action per card, thoughts nudging you in some way.

One card may say, “jump rope. Another may say, “go dig in the dirt,” or “remember to sketch the big oak tree in the park,” or “paint the office wall marine blue.” Collect these ideas for times when you want to run away from the broken pain playing havoc in your soul.

When next you want to escape, take a deep breath instead. Let it out slowly while you pick out a card. And then try it. Just try it. For five minutes. Maybe longer. Give yourself permission to only make the dough but not bake the bread. Or dig a hole without planting something in it. The point is to move just a little bit toward healing. Toward reconstructing our broken vessels.

Prayer

Send me ideas, God. For healing me. For healing those I love. For my brokenness to slowly fill in with life again. Amen.

© Jennifer Ohman-RodriguezJennifer Ohman-Rodriguez and Jenniferohmanrodriguez.com, 2021. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Jennifer Ohman-Rodriguez and Jenniferohmanrodriguez.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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Healing meditation, Trauma, Trauma recovery

Goodness

Jennifer Ohman-Rodriguez

“The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good…God saw everything that [God] had made, and indeed, it was very good…” Genesis 1:12; 31 NRSV

Reflection

Healing, a form of creation. Re-covering of our torn parts. Re-solving our mysteries, maladies, aches, behaviors related to trauma’s initial wounding. Re-generating our minds, bodies. Freeing us from cyclical thoughts, emotional triggers, felt sensations, and ongoing replays. Re-newing our hopes and dreams. Re-viving our souls. Re-storing us into life itself through re-juvenation of our inner human fullness. God’s creation re-creating us. Moment by moment. Minute by minute. Healing action by healing action. Re-storing us with goodness.

Healing Practice

List what is good. Name six like the six days God created. Name more if you get on a roll. Or use the ones written here. Speak these small goodness’s aloud.

Today I cried and felt that it is good.

Today I watched the sunrise and saw that it is good.

Today I baked bread and tasted that it is good.

Today I opened the window and smelled that it is good.

Today I called a friend and heard that it is good.

Today I smiled and felt that it is good.

Prayer

God of creative goodness, help me see goodness through my eyes. Help me feel goodness through my skin. Help me hear goodness through my ears. Help me taste goodness through my food. Help me smell goodness through my nose. Amen. 

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Advent, Healing meditation, Trauma, Trauma recovery

Advent Mirror

Jennifer Ohman-Rodriguez

And excerpt from my recent blog post for Faith + Lead.

A young woman hurries. Looks ahead, behind. Scans the surrounding hills. Startles as birds squawk overhead. Tightens her cloak. Covers herself with her arms. 

Something in her body propels her forward. Away from the unknown. Away from the incomprehensible. Away from what feels like possible death. 

In a town she finds the door. She knocks but cannot wait. She enters. Calls out to make sure. Latches the door behind her. Breathes. Someone within the house stirs. Calls out. Approaches. Greeting her with warm words like a loving mother. “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb,” Elizabeth exclaims (Luke 1:42 NRSV).

See the full post by clicking the title below.

Advent Mirror

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Grief, Healing meditation, Trauma, Trauma recovery

Impatient

Jennifer Ohman-Rodriguez

“What is my strength, that I should wait? And what is my end that I should be patient? Is my strength the strength of stones, or is my flesh bronze? In truth I have no help in me, and any resource is driven from me.” Job 6: 11-13 NRSV

Reflection

Eyes stare. Mouth droops. Limbs sit in supposed silence. Only sores speak. Erupting into puss pools.

Life evaporating like tiny raindrops on desert wind. Leftovers buried with each child. Leaving Job with no vision of future.

Job needs others to hold future for him. To be strength for him. But Job learns people’s consistency and appropriateness in tragedy and trauma varies. Many are unreliable, questionable, hurtful, and harmful. Job says,

“Those who withhold kindness from a friend forsake the fear of the Almighty. My companions are treacherous like a torrent-bed…in time of heat they disappear: when it is hot, they vanish from their place.” Job 6:14, 17

Job’s friends posture in trauma’s heat. Find quick answers to suffering’s sorrow. Offer support in limp gestures. Cover their cluelessness with words worn as thin cloaks.

In his pit, Job sees truth. Recognizes their moralism as yet another lathering of pain. Adding putrid frosting on top of bitter cake. Each taste full of shaming shapes. Requiring sufferer’s scarce amount of patience to be used on help’s imposters claiming compassion.

“Compassion means ministry.” writes theologian Andrew Purves. Ministry “for healing or wholeness.”

Compassion does not say, “your head should not feel heavy.” Because compassion does not expand pain’s cutting edge. With knives of judgement and misconstrued power.Compassion sees face-to-face. Hears truth. Believes. Feels. Provides. Compassion says, “My head feels your heaviness. Here are some soft pillows.”

Healing Practice: Do No-Thing

Today we offer ourselves compassion. Not judgement.

Self-compassion allows us to do nothing. Only asks us to sit. Stare.

Until sitting leads to noticing. Noticing the sounds around us. Naming them one by one.  

Noticing more sounds. Coming from within. Breath breathing. Fast, slow, deep, shallow, labored, stilted, heavy.

Breath bringing us inside our bodies. Awakening realizations of sensations. Feelings living in muscles, organs, limbs. Some achy, hard, tingly. Some heavy or warm. Forming shapes. Circle, oval, brick, or plane.

Breath leading us back. To what surrounds us. The drawing on the wall. Ceiling fan above. Lamp across the room. Breathing in silence. Breathing out stillness. Breathing in staring. Breathing out seeing.

Prayer

Insistent God, persist in loving me. Persist in caring for me. Persist in healing me. Sprinkle silent kindnesses on my ashes. Infuse quiet kindnesses into my soul. Fill me with just enough determination to persevere another minute, another hour, another day. Send people courageous enough to sit with me in my pit as it echoes with nothing but muffled torment. Amen.

[i] Purves, Andrew. (1989) The Search for Compassion: Spirituality and Ministry. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. Page 17.

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