Page 214 - Creating Spiritual and Psychological Resilience

Rituals, Routines, and Resilience 183

always been so inspired by this story. I believe that this is what we were
practicing in a functional way in those retreats in Auschwitz. We were
practicing working with the collective trauma of the human disaster of
Aushwitz and seeing that it is not separate from ourselves. Each of us has
a killing aspect. Each of us has rage and intolerance. The ritual is about
acknowledging this in each of us. Learning to love those parts of ourselves
and the world is the path. As a psychotherapist and chaplain, I have wit-
nessed countless accounts of people suppressing those parts of themselves
and I have witnessed the individual and collective damage this inflicts.
Maybe by ritual it may look like the poem, “miss rosie,” by the august poet
Lucille Clifton:

when i watch you
wrapped up like garbage
sitting, surrounded by the smell
of too old potato peels
or
when i watch you
in your old man’s shoes
with the little toe cut out
sitting, waiting for your mind
like next week’s grocery
i say
when i watch you
you wet brown bag of a woman
who used to be the best looking gal in georgia
used to be called the Georgia Rose
i stand up
through your destruction
i stand up

Sometimes it looks like the ritual of noticing the aspects of our world
and acknowledging that person, situation, emotion, or event as a part
of ourselves. Like Clifton, we too can stand up and be fully present of
this aspect. Life does not happen in one approach, and for this reason,
resilience and flexibility can be most helpful in determining what is truly
needed. Like at the Auschwitz retreat, we start with not knowing and let-
ting go of our fixed ideas. Then, we can bear witness to what is arising
in that particular moment, and then we practice allowing loving action
to flow from that moment. Like the people in Cambodia, they practice