Fleeing fighting in South Sudan, Sadia (not her real name) found herself abandoned and alone as a refugee. Then a message of hope came from an unexpected source…

As she walked towards the Ugandan border, Sadia tried to push away the dark thoughts in her head: memories of how her husband had suddenly and coldly left her and their three children. Of how the seemingly endless tribal fighting in South Sudan had left her without a home and tore her family apart. She winced as she thought of her brothers, who had stepped in to help her when her husband left – but who took off with their families as the fighting got closer. It felt like another betrayal of her trust. It still stung.

Sadia still had her children, yet she felt starkly alone.

At last they crossed the border and were taken to a refugee camp. It was noisy: so many people, some arguing, some shouting. They were safer but food, clothing and medication was all strictly rationed or not available.

Journey through despair…

The lack of peace in the camp matched the restlessness inside Sadia. She could feel herself becoming more and more bitter towards everyone who’d abandoned her. As her spirits sank further, Sadia turned to alcohol. She struggled to care for her children. “Perhaps they would be better off without me,” she thought to herself.

Then one day, someone handed her a small object. “What’s this?” she wondered. Looking closer, she saw it had a speaker and buttons for playing, rewinding and fast forwarding. She pressed play.

A voice emanated from the device and started telling a story. The main character was a man called Joseph, who from a young age was mistreated horribly by his brothers. Then abandoned. “Sounds familiar,” she thought.

Yet, Joseph was able to find hope and a purpose. As the story went on, great things happened for Joseph, but the wound of his brothers’ rejection stayed with him. One day he was given a chance to take revenge upon his brothers, but he refused and forgave them.

… to hope and purpose

The noise around Sadia seemed to fade as she thought about Joseph’s words to his brothers: “…you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive…”

Sadia decided to find out where the little audio player came from. That’s how she met Sam Malish, a CMS local partner from Yei, who is trying to help people in displaced persons camps heal from suffering. He invited her to a small gathering where people were encouraged to share about difficult things that had happened to them. Sadia wasn’t quite sure why, but it made her feel better to talk and listen to other people’s experiences. She felt less alone.

She also learned more about Jesus, who suffered horribly and forgave. It was amazing to consider that kind of love. As she prayed and turned to Jesus more, she could feel hope and peace growing within her. It was like Jesus was carrying her pain, lightening her burdens. She could focus again on her children, who were relieved to have their mother caring for them again.

Others around her could see her changing. “You’re looking better, Sadia,” someone said to her.  

“Jesus gave me peace and hope,” she replied. “This can happen for you, too.”

Related stories

Get our email newsletter:

SIGN UP

The post Press play for peace appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).

The golden light of God’s kintsugi: mission and mental health

by Bill Braviner

There is a poem by Rumi, the thirteenth-century Sufi mystic, available in translation as “Childhood Friends”, which contains the following lines:

Let a teacher wave away the flies
and put a plaster on the wound.
Don’t turn your head. Keep looking
at the bandaged place.
That’s where the light enters you.
And don’t believe for a moment
that you’re healing yourself.¹

Rumi seems to have been the first person who explicitly talks about the light entering a person through a wound, but it is an image that has been taken up and used by many people since.

Benjamin Blood wrote in 1860:

There is a crack in every thing that God has made; but through that crevice enters the light of heaven.²

In 1929, Ernest Hemingway wrote:

The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.³

And famously, Leonard Cohen sang of the light coming in through the cracks in his 1992 song “Anthem”. Cohen’s own comment on the song was, “There is a crack in everything that you can put together: Physical objects, mental objects, constructions of any kind. But that’s where the light gets in, and that’s where the resurrection is and that’s where the return, that’s where the repentance is. It is with the confrontation, with the brokenness of things.”4

How do all these quotes help us explore mission and mental health?

As someone who has experienced severe mental health difficulties in the past, I write from the perspective of that experience, and of the healing I continue to experience, as well as the insights I have gained over a decade’s reflection on and learning from the experience.

In common with many people who have suffered psychological, emotional or spiritual trauma over the years, one of the concepts and images that became, and remains, very resonant for me is that of the Japanese art of kintsugi – the repairing of a broken object by incorporating new material that highlights and celebrates the repair, the joins, the “cracks”, and makes the resulting object into something that celebrates its story and identity as something that once was broken and is now more beautiful, because of the repair rather than in spite of it.

This image became very profound for me, as it has for others, because I experienced a deepening of my understanding of God, of the world and of myself, as a result of the process of living through and living with mental health issues, and the experience of how God wrought healing in me.

My healing noticeably began when I was brought up short by the realisation (obvious in so many ways!) that the story of Easter, of the resurrection, contains the central truth that Christ was raised with his wounds – and that, in fact, it was the wounds themselves that were offered as a proof of his resurrection, for example in John 20:24–29. Just as the risen Christ bore his wounds, so my healing would be not in spite of mine, but with them – and in some ways, through them.

We live in a world where many are wounded, in many ways. The psychological, emotional and spiritual wounds that so many people carry are not more important than the physical wounds inflicted on so many in our world, but neither are they less so. We recognise far more acutely today the seriousness of, for example, PTSD – something for which a century ago, brave men were being shot as “cowards”.

Healing from such woundedness need not, and often does not, involve a recovery from something so much as an adapting to it, a living with it. We are not called to a God who says, “Come back when you are fixed,” but to a God who is with us in our walk through the valley of the shadow of death, a God who promises that the weary and heavy-laden can cast their burdens on him and find rest for their souls. Our healing is less about “being fixed”, and far more about finding peace, wholeness, shalom in God.

This becomes very important when journeying with people who have psychological, emotional or spiritual burdens that are impacting negatively on their mental health, on their ability to interact with and cope with the context in which they are living, the circumstances of their lives, the filter through which they are able to see the world.

Where, for those of us who live with woundedness in our psyche, our emotions and our spirit (and I would argue that to some extent at least, this is all of us), do we find the deepest activity of the Holy Spirit? Surely it is at those very places of brokenness, where God seeks not so much to undo our woundedness but to transform it, not so much to “fix” as to heal, not so much to bring repair as wholeness? It’s at those places, those parts of who we are, where God finds the cracks through which the light – the light of God’s love and life – gets in.

In mission, therefore, in working with people, or communities, or societies to enable and encourage an openness to the work of the Holy Spirit as God seeks to reveal his kingdom more and more fully, it is the places of brokenness, of woundedness, of crucifixion, that ought to be a central focus. It is those places, those cracks, where the healing God seeks to bring, needs to pour in – and it is in transforming those aspects of people, communities, societies and so on that the glory of resurrection begins to be seen, that new life begins to flourish, that the glory of God transforms trauma and brings beauty from brokenness.

As the golden light of God’s kintsugi pours in through the cracks, part of the healing is that people, communities, societies begin to discover anew what they are and what they are called to be, what potential they have and what they can do. Often this is in new or unexpected directions, through new perspectives opened up by the processes of brokenness and healing. My own engagement in the field of disability and theology would be a case in point, but so would the stories of so many others. Some good examples are recounted in Pastor Mike Mather’s Having Nothing, Possessing Everything,⁵ and in Fr Greg Boyle’s Tattoos on the Heart and Barking to the Choir.⁶

It is my conviction, borne out of over 30 years engagement in parish life, 26 of them in ordained ministry, that it is when we pay attention to beautiful work of healing that God is doing and seeks to do in people (including ourselves), in communities and in society, that we come to an appreciation of where God’s mission is focused, and where God’s activity is directed. This is not to suggest that God is only interested in particular people or places – only in those who have some recognisable psychological, emotional or spiritual difficulty but it is to suggest that there is something of this in us all, and in all the ways we live together, that God seeks to work on, to heal and yes, to use as a strength – for his power is made perfect in weakness.

God calls us, not so much to “the broken”, as to engage individually and corporately with our brokenness; not so much to “the poor”, as to engage individually and corporately with our poverty; not so much to “the needy” as to engage individually and corporately with our needs, and with our abilities and assets, so that the golden light of his wholeness can both pour into us through the cracks in our being, and also shine out of us through those same cracks, for the healing of others and of the world.

The wounds we carry, then, are not so much burdens to be shed as anchors of grace. Not so much shame to be borne, but openings to love. Not so much faults to be fixed as openings to healing, to wholeness, to the kingdom and to Christ. May we help one another to let God pour in the golden light of his kintsugi, that all may see the enhanced beauty and blessing of those who know that they are made whole.

About the author

Originally from South Shields, County Durham, Bill Braviner trained with Price Waterhouse as a chartered accountant after university, before responding to a call to ordination. He was ordained in 1995 and recently moved to the Diocese of Leeds, where he is the archdeacon of Halifax.

Having experienced a period of mental health difficulties some 10 years ago, Bill was led to develop his engagement in issues around disability, working with and journeying with others who brought a perspective from the “inside”. This led to the formation of Disability and Jesus, a “user-led” group that seeks to encourage change and foster access and inclusion across the church. Bill was also disability adviser to the bishop and Diocese of Durham from 2015 until leaving the diocese to take up the role of archdeacon.

More from this issue

Notes

1 “Childhood Friends” in The Essential Rumi, trans. Coleman Barks et al. (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), 139–41.
2 Benjamin Blood, Optimism: The Lesson of Ages (Boston: Bela Marsh, 1860), 91.
3 Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (London: Arrow Books, 2004).
4 Reported in Cassie Weber, “‘There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in’: The story of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Anthem’”, Quartz, 11 Nov 2016, accessed 22 October 2021, https://qz.com/835076/leonard-cohens-anthem-the-story-of-the-line-there-is-a-crack-ineverything- thats-how-the-light-gets-in/.
5 Michael Mather, Having Nothing, Possessing Everything: Finding Abundant Communities in Unexpected Places (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2018).
6 Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion (New York: Free Press, 2010); Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018).

The post The golden light of God’s kintsugi: mission and mental health appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).

Mark and Jess Bamping launch their community hub – Candid Beer in Stafford this weekend.

Mark loves beer and I am sure will brew as well as serve up decent local and creative independent craft beers. But the driver is community and rather than calling it a cafe or pub it’s a community hub.

Mark brought the idea to our make good week a while back now and when he made his pitch, as well as serving beer he had brewed (making it a memorable pitch), he was concerned about loneliness and thinking that men in particular will gather around doing stuff together (such as brewing beer).

They have developed this into the design of the space and there being a room for groups and activities as well as a larger table to gather round.

Raise a glass of craft beer today to toast Candid beer on their launch and go visit if you are anywhere nearby.

More from the blog

Get our email newsletter:

SIGN UP

The post Candid Beer Launch – another Make Good idea becomes real appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).

“It’s important that you know this was unanimous. We all believe this is the right step for you at this time in your life – hold on to that in the tough times.” These were the words I heard when I was selected as a mission partner. Little did I know how much they would come back to me over the next eight years.

By Ruth Radley, CMS mission partner in Birmingham

I have been with Church Mission Society since 2001 when I was a short-termer in Tanzania. I stayed in touch while back in the UK and when I realised I was heading overseas again – this time long term, or so I thought – I naturally went back to CMS.

Did I suffer from poor mental health previously? Not at all. My personality was such that I was always quick to feel happy and rejoice about certain situations, and quick to weep and feel sad or angry about others, but I would always bounce back fairly easily.

Did I expect that almost eight years after leaving I would return burned out and with clinical depression (which I had almost certainly been living with, but hiding well – even to myself – for at least 18 months)? Or that two years later I would still be on medication? No, I did not.

But that is where I now find myself. CMS have been amazing, supporting me with debriefing and friendship, but it’s a long, painful road. Would I have fallen into this depression had I been living in the UK? It’s hard to say – perhaps, perhaps not. Yet here I am, clinically depressed and STILL a mission partner, doing my best to go forward with life and mission amid many questions.

So here are a few small things that I have learned along the way. 

Be real

About five months into an intended six month leave in the UK, I finally accepted returning to the place I loved and had called home, and which was suffering terribly through war, was not going to happen. I was no longer healthy enough to live there and be effective.

It was one of the hardest decisions of my life, having believed I would be there for at least 10 years. Calling a few important people in South Sudan to tell them I was not returning was incredibly tough. I loved them and had invested so much into what was my home.

Life is anything but simple or predictable. Life is what we live in the middle of, affected by all kinds of things around us, and sometimes that is simply overwhelming.

After a long while I was strong enough to think about my future, and grateful that working in chaplaincy at Birmingham Children’s Hospital fitted with both the hospital and CMS, as well as me. The team have been amazing – they don’t know my whole story, but know that I was broken, am still healing and see this new mission work as part of my healing story.

Accept you are human

One of the hardest things has been being put on a pedestal as an “amazing person”. I am who I am – flaws and warts and all – doing what I have been called to do, no different from anyone else. In some ways perhaps that has made accepting my present situation harder – feeling I had let down so many people who had supported me so faithfully.

However, I am learning that life isn’t perfect, and at times that imperfection overwhelms us. We are not lesser Christians because we are struggling with mental health. Our bodies can get sick at different times, and so can our minds. I prayed so hard for God to help me, I begged and begged, but continued spiralling downwards. I recognised that sadly, although I was blessed to be able to return each year to South Sudan, I wasn’t strong enough to live there. That was, and is, a tough reality. However, it doesn’t mean I can’t still support friends there. I am regularly in contact with South Sudanese friends sharing life, and the encouragement goes both ways.

It also doesn’t mean I am no use in the kingdom, but I did have to relocate. Perhaps, as Henri Nouwen says, I am a “wounded healer”. I know first-hand some of the darkness of life, and how, despite the best intentions, it is not always possible to control your mind when it is sick. This is something I never experienced previously and I would have been critical of anyone who said that. However, it is the story of many people and I hope my experiences, even when I am healed, will lead me to greater compassion and understanding.

Don’t go it alone

Another thing I struggle with is doing mission as a single person, though this may not be everyone’s experience. It is a reality that, however great your friends, you do have to somehow fit in with their family commitments. And when you move somewhere new, there is no one who knows you – everything is an effort, even coming home to get to know more people.

However, whatever I may feel at times, I am not alone. I have a small team of people around me who have been faithful in supporting me and have not been too fazed by the emails they have received. (The deal was they would pray for me, challenge me and wouldn’t tell my mother!) And there are others who have kept in touch and been concerned.

Back in the UK, I live in a house-share, not alone. I have a spiritual director who accepts me and my struggles, and has experience of living overseas for a period of time. And I have my team who understand life is tough as I continue to try to make sense of those years. I have four CMS mission partners, past and present, who regularly check up on me, as well as friends from other organisations and, of course, the wider CMS family.

Accept, no matter how long your faith journey, you will never know it all or have it all sorted

In some ways, I am now reconstructing the faith I have held for 42 years. There is so much of my last six years or so that I simply do not understand, but I still serve a God I believe wants to be known to all. Who is for us, not against us, though at times I struggle with that. I also know disappointment with God and am still working through that.

I know that life doesn’t always go the way we had planned or hoped, both for nations and personally – and that is also the experience of many of the parents and families I walk alongside through the tough moments in hospital. I haven’t got life sorted, I don’t have answers, and I don’t pretend I do. I listen, and sometimes I can empathise with some of what is said. I perhaps have a deeper understanding of the difficulties people go through in this area that may somehow stay with me as I continue in this life of mission we are called to.

Related posts

The post How to… do mission in the face of depression appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).