Jun 20 | CPE Journal #14: June 14th

I read an article comparing approaches of compassion and competence, also from the CASC website I mentioned earlier.

“Compassion is in knowing and feeling the wound. In compassion knowing is loving, with the erotic intensity that unites.”

This again reminded me of those visible wounds Christ brings back to us before bearing them home. Even more astounding, though, is this revelation expressed in the title of a book I feel I must read: God Is A Trauma, by Greg Mogenson. He describes it thusly:

“Just as God has been described as transcendent and unknowable, a trauma is an event which transcends our capacity to experience it. Compared to the finite nature of the traumatized soul, the traumatic event seems infinite, all-powerful, and wholly other.”

Trauma is further described as pain so great that it “breaks the connection between knowing and feeling the suffering.” We are no longer able to name the pain – it changes us so deeply, at a molecular level. With research being done into how these changes may affect us throughout generations (a smaller form of evolution) it would make perfect sense that some of us would continue to carry what was so flippantly named “the God gene.”

This is breath-taking and unbelievable to me, and yet part of it sings to me in a cellular language remembered but long unspoken. Of course it is not only God who is changed by our encounter – our change is that we are split open and filled with stars. And yet it is not that. Perhaps, if Christ is the new Adam (or a new Eve, offering a new fruit), our eyes are opened and our inner starlight is finally visible. Clouds are torn from our eyes – this is a new thing but it is building on work that is old. What I call the Christ-process permeates the universe – the ever-blend of sacred and profane, life and death. Creation, Exodus, Exile, Crucifixion/Resurrection – a thousand stories point to this.

Does God suffer trauma through the crucifixion and resurrection? Under this criteria that is only possible if God is also capable of not knowing all things. I can’t decide, then, if I want to consider the idea that God suffered trauma in the Fall and sought to close the gap out of the desire for us (through further trauma?), or if perhaps trauma in God’s case (or other cases) does not rely on a lack of knowledge. I think we can know the source of our pain even if it’s trauma. Trauma is defined in another part of the article as an escalating suffering that increasingly cripples and distorts/disrupts the person’s orientation and functioning in life. This also excludes God in classical terms – an omnipotent creator c0uld not experience this. This makes me uncomfortable – can God really meet someone in trauma if God has not experienced it? And yet Scripture remains ambiguous. ;) Sometimes God uses language to describe Godself that deeply suggests inner pain and turmoil. And who’s to say that the distortion or disruption is crippling in a sense of ultimate lessening – anything can be crippled. Our sense of safety, self-worth, ego, destructive tendencies. God has transformed so much. Who’s to say that God could not transform God’s own trauma – indeed like anyone who addresses their inner trauma. God’s identity may then have been challenged and distorted – and ultimately transformed.

-Clarity

PS When I looked up trauma on the online dictionary it only referred to the wound. With that definition things are simpler. ;)

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