From “Designed to Heal: What the Body Shows Us About Healing Wounds, Repairing Relationships, and Restoring Community” by Jennie A. McLaurin and Cymbeline Tancongco Culiat
Modeling the idea of working to fully close all areas of a wound, Sister Simone Campbell, a Roman Catholic nun, lawyer, and activist, practices contemplative listening as a way to promote complete healing. Sometimes called “soul inquiry,” contemplative listening is an effort to pay attention not just to what is said, but to what is meant. What is the truth behind the words? For Christians, it seeks to recognize the presence of the Holy Spirit in the conversation being shared. It is patient and nonanxious in approach, allowing the speaker to unfold their story as they are able, without criticism.
Sister Simone resists the idea that we can only be concerned about the 99 percent when the one percent seem culpable for an injury. Whether that one percent are the billionaires, the sports stars, or the most murderous of inmates, she prays to understand them so that al of us can be folded together into a seamless healthy body. Wounds left gaping, even if only by one percent, will never fully heal.
What might this look like in our social healing? How about those enzymes that call out from the healing matrix for cells, those far removed from the injured site, to join the process? They may have played no part in creating the injury or allowing it to fester. Yet they belong to the solution; indeed, they are necessary to it.