A Word from Pastor Lisa: Blessing of a Skinned Knee
When I was around 5, I tumbled off my Ms. Pac-Man Big Wheel and skinned my knee deeply enough that I still have the scar. I had removed the back seat from the Big Wheel and was riding on my knees down a small driveway hill. The pain of the injury taught me not to ride the Big Wheel improperly again.
I wonder how we can allow pain to be our teacher. This pandemic year has given us plenty of opportunities to contemplate pain and suffering. We’ve given up or lost so much. As people of faith, how can our healing from our hurts become a space of growth and transformation?
We began the Lenten season this week with Ash Wednesday. Typically we spend 40 days preparing for the death and resurrection of Jesus. We use this time for introspection, repentance, and fasting in order to draw closer to Jesus. Pastor Teri reminded us that this past year has felt like one long Lent. As we both endure and emerge from it, we can allow it to be our teacher.
In her book The Blessing of a Skinned Knee, Jewish psychologist Dr. Wendy Mogel distills the wisdom of Jewish teachings for raising self-reliant, compassionate, and ethical children. She offers particular criticism for adults who try to inoculate children from the pain of life, and she introduces two Hebrew terms to help us counteract that tendency:
The first is tzar gidul banim, which is the pain of raising children or our children’s pain. Without this pain, they can never grow strong.
The other is tsimtsum, which is a spiritual model for lovingly relinquishing control over our children. It means “the contraction of divine energy,” and it’s the model God used in Scripture, pulling away to give humans more autonomy. Sometimes humans took wrong steps, but in every situation, the people of God grew more resilient.
As followers of Jesus, we might see these terms in a few ways. The first is in our relationship with young people in our own lives. How do we help them to experience the warts and wounds of the human race and learn from them? The second is in our experience as children of God. How is this season in our lives helping us to grow, even if it leaves lifelong scars?
In the Beatitudes, Jesus offers blessings to people in several painful situations, such as a poverty of spirit, mourning, and persecution. This isn’t to say we must suffer in order to be blessed. But it is a reminder that in our pain and suffering, we might discover the blessing of growth, resilience, and transformation. We might discover Jesus with us. I hope you will join us on this journey of Lent as we learn from our scars together.