A Space to Belong
From time to time there is a need to say the quiet parts out loud. To name what feels deeply broken, maligned, malformed, and incongruent with the design, beauty, truth, and order of the God I’ve known and walked with. Not with condemnation, but with curiosity and the offer of perhaps a better way or better word. This series has been about fleshing out some of the nuance in words like sozo (healing), the “j” word (justice), and now collective. The intent, to name some things from my own experience and to offer some invitations to trod down new paths together. To be clear about the thought, the heart, and the intentionality that has gone into creating spaces for healing and hope on the way to a more just and beautiful world. Each of these words as parts and their sum is an offering from capacities I believe God has been growing in me for some time and as much as I would love to arrive some day, I’m deeply convinced that these are paths to journey not destinations to reach.
Collective is a path I’ve longed to step off of. There are parts of me that much prefer to go it alone, to pull up my boot straps, to think my way through it or simply muscle my way home. With enough skill and enough will, I delude myself into believing that I am better off this way. I am safer when I am in control and after all, who else has my best intentions in mind at all times. This pattern has been destructive to my soul. Thanks be to God, a few years ago, I was invited back onto the path of healing in community in an unlikely space and in an unexpected way. Collective became an invitation to an embodied experience of the living God in the presence of other bodies.
It was a blistering cold January day in New York City, the third day of a trip with an ecumenically diverse group of clergy engaging in a 6-month cohort to spend some time thinking about the kind of leadership required for the moments we found ourselves in. We had just paused before lunch for some gospel reflection led by a Bishop in the Episcopal Church whose engagement with and communication from the scriptures emanates from someone who has walked with God in the cool of the garden. He brought our minds and hearts to the attention of a familiar passage, one in which Jesus approaches a man and asks as He often did, “What do you want?” The refrain of this question broke something in me. Like a dam, tears began to roll down my face and a quiet sob that would last for what felt like an eternity consumed me. For a moment, the room and the people in it were not there, I was alone with Jesus and by the power of the Holy Spirit heard Him ask me this question. Healing. Was all I could muster in a wordless response, but it is what I felt in the depth of me. As the faces and room came back into focus I began to sense even deeper that the healing I desired was from injury caused by people and places just like where I found myself. I felt that in this I was being invited into intimacy in the place of injury and this felt like far too much in the moment.
Having had years to process this in therapy, spiritual direction, and even through some body work, I am now even more aware of the path this puts me on. I don’t believe this is an unfamiliar story; that a leader pursuing mercy and justice would be misunderstood, have their character maligned, and experience significant harm from the very people and places where they believe their help will come from. The quiet part I am saying out loud is that communities of faith and people of faith are really good at being human and as humans, hurting one another. It is with that awareness, not in spite of it, that I am seeking to with my life and vocation make invitations and build spaces for mercy and justice leaders to belong in safety as they pursue healing and hope. Collective, is that invitation.
The reality for me and the reality I believe for all of us is that we were never meant to do anything alone. It is baked into creation and into our being. Every one of us is as ourselves a complexity of many parts working together. The parts working together in me are meant to work together so that I can work together with you, and vice versa. Further, this doesn’t happen by accident, or rather it probably shouldn’t. I’m curious what would happen if we were more intentional about the kinds of spaces we created and the ways we created them in order to promote safety, care, and belonging in such a way that an environment for healing and hope is cultivated. This is the work I am naming, in order to begin doing. If you’ve been journeying along in this series here is what I have sought to name.
-Healed people heal people, so we are making space to cultivate wholeness.
-Justice is God’s idea, so we are making space for healers to advance justice from a place of healing.
-Collective is what we were made for, so we are making space so that no one ever has to go alone.
There are two distinct ways you can join me in this season (yes they are the same in every part of this series):
Help me find the healers. Offering spiritual direction, soul care, and strategic support virtually, means I can connect to anyone anywhere in the world. If you know them, support their work, or are them, let’s connect. The simplest way is to have you make a warm introduction or for them to reach out directly to benjamin@sozojustice.com . Even if someone is unsure what these offerings are or mean, a conversation could be the difference in them stepping towards healing and hope in a new way in this season.
Empower the healing of the healers. This work is made possible without cost and virtually in order to ensure healers do not have to consider how they might step into a space like this. No board to ask, no funding of their own needed, I want healers to be able to reach out and begin walking the path to healing and hope. This means your financial support makes that possible. Would you consider a one-time or monthly gift to begin empowering healers today? If so, you can do that here.
Thank you in advance for the ways in which together we can create space for healing and hope on the way to a more just and beautiful world.
Benjamin Wills
Founder, Executive Director
This is part 3 of a 3 part series in which we walk through the name and methodologies of Sozo Justice Collective.
