Dealing With Our Original Wounds

In his book Lies My Teacher Told Me about Christopher Columbus (Sadly now out of print) author James Loewen tries to set the record straight about Columbus’ arrival into the so-called “New World” and counters so many of the myths that many of us grew up with. Myths like:

• Columbus “discovered” America (these lands had already been visited by travelers from other places and had been inhabited for more than 10,000 years prior to his arrival)

• This land was sparsely populated when Columbus arrived (there were more than 14 million Indigenous people living across this region)

• That the people living here were “primitive” (in fact, the early settlers learned so much about agriculture and other new technologies from the people they encountered here – not to mention codes of law and the foundations of democracy itself)

• That Columbus was warmly received (many Indigenous groups fought back AND people like Columbus decimated the population by knowingly introducing smallpox and other diseases)

And the list goes on…

In many places today, the second Monday in October is now referred to as Indigenous People’s Day as one small way of trying to re-focus our attention to where it belongs historically and I have written about this previously here and here. Federally the holiday remains as “Columbus Day” (especially with this administration) and whether Indigenous People’s Day is even named and celebrated varies greatly by city and region. 

But in what was once called Casconchiagon (which translates to “River of Falls” or “River of Many Falls”) by the original Seneca people of this region, we do celebrate Indigenous People’s Day and you can check out all of the day’s offerings here.

In our first reading today from Galatians 4, Paul draws a comparison between those who are spiritually free and those who remain spiritually enslaved. While he does not come out and say it this way, I imagine that he wonders why people would not choose freedom when it is available to them. 

What we hear in the gospel from Luke 11 sheds some light on this. In it Jesus is commenting that “this generation is an evil generation” because it keeps demanding proof for claims that have been settled long ago. His listeners keep looking either for a shortcut for their transformation or are unwilling to authentically change their lives – as the people of Nineveh did when they heard Jonah’s preaching. 

In short, Jesus knows that transformation will cost his listeners something. They will have to change their ways in order to live into the reality that he calls the kin-dom of God. And unlike the people of Nineveh, his listeners chose to remain bound by their history. They dig in their heels and do not want to engage the difficult work that has the power to free everybody.

I connect these readings directly to the holiday we celebrate today as well as to our struggle to be free from the past that continues to enslave us and keeps us collectively sick.

Minneapolis-based author and activist, Susan Raffo, wrote a profound book in 2022 called Liberated to the Bone: Histories, Bodies, Futures. One of the chapters (which you can read online) is called “Dealing With The Original Wounds.” In it, she talks about her work as a bodyworker who has studied craniosacral therapy and other modalities. And she says, “I know that if you can identify the original wound, the first significant hurt, and if you can support that original wound to get what it needs to transform, then many of the things that happened afterwards will transform at the same time. I have seen that kind of unwinding, this moment of deep healing, within the cells and tissues of people who invite me to be with them. Held trauma is a moment of unfinished history. Life wants to come back to the present moment, to feeling connected to other life. This means that held trauma will find a way to resurface again and again until it is finished. This is why a person seems to get involved with the same kind of person, the same boss and situation at work, the same feeling of isolation and sadness. Until we can heal or shift the original conditioning or experiences, we will get tangled up in the same tangles.

The same is true of what happens to the collective body. I believe that for those of us who live on this land, there are two significant original wounds. These wounds overlay a whole range of histories that we have separately brought as people coming from many different places but when we settle here, on these lands, then we settle in relationship to the original wounds.“

She goes on to say that, “The first wound is the attempted genocide of those people indigenous to this land.” This “first wound” set in motion many, many forms of harm and disconnection that continue to plague us to this day.

In the introduction to this chapter, Raffo invites us the reader to “pay attention to yourself [as you read this chapter]. I am going to talk about the violence that is the foundation of the creation of the United States. It is easy to read history and turn it into information: something that a person “knows” and “understands.” Please don’t do that. Everything written here is about real people; people like you and your kin. What is written here might be about your kin or your people might be the kin who were committing the violence. Either way, notice yourself as you read. Listen deeply, listen to how your ancestors might whisper to you through your DNA, through your spirit. Read this as a prayer, not a school lesson. And then breathe.”

I would invite us to do the same. Let this history sink in.

Anytime we decide to try to engage wounds – especially old wounds – we can easily start to feel a lot of things: overwhelm, fear, anxiety, embarrassment, shame, etc. But if we can stay with the process, real transformation becomes possible.

Jesus knew this and invited his followers to attend to the old wounds around us – wounds that keep us separate. Wounds that fracture our world. Wounds that crush spirits and break bodies. Wounds that rob us of our humanity.

Obviously attending Indigenous People’s Day observances, reading books about Native Americans, doing land acknowledgements and visiting places like Ganondagan State Historic Site are only a start. These are not the full repair that is required and are meant to be entry points not destinations as we work to journey more deeply into collective healing work. But we all must start somewhere.

Maybe today, we can take some silent prayer time to do as Raffo invites us to – to listen how our ancestors might whisper through our DNA, through our spirit – as we try to engage old wounds that need to be healed.