Browsing by Subject "Healing"

ABSTRACTThis thesis is offers exilic texts as the basis for restoration for communities traumatized by displacement. The scriptural focus for the thesis is Jeremiah 30-33, the Book of Restoration. The purpose of the thesis is to provide tools for inner-city pastors to navigate the opportunities and challenges of displacement caused by gentrification. The thesis is fueled by the contrast between numerous studies that report the benefits of gentrification versus its ills experienced as a pastoral witness of the machinery of displacement in the northwest quadrant of Washington, D.C. In Dr. Ellen Davis’ work on Jeremiah, she shows Jeremiah’s painful growth into his prophetic role. This growth occurs through laments or “protests addressed to God” thus making it possible to “lay claim to realistic hope.” This birth of hope is in the beginning of the book in Jeremiah 1:10, “See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant,” with building and planting as themes for Jeremiah 30-33. Dr. Davis further explicates hope’s placement. Hope finds a concrete place economically through Jeremiah’s land purchase (Chapter 32:6-15) and socially through community building (chapters 30 and 31). Building upon this work, my thesis concludes that Book of Restoration provides a relevant and effective model of restoration for today’s church.

This dissertation traces the complex connections between violence, trauma, healing, and medicalization in North America. The project connects to conversations in medical anthropology and American studies, and intersects with science studies, postcolonial studies, the anthropology of militarism, and Native American studies. The central innovation in this dissertation is its focus on veterans who suffer from both the violence of war and the limits of trauma's conventional treatments. I track their experiences through a therapeutic system designed by and for Native people, and argue that questions about suffering and healing from war are inextricable from discourses and practices of gender, race, and territory.Since the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) diagnosis was codified in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1980, the object of combat trauma has grown to occupy significant space in popular culture. In the contemporary world, PTSD serves as the primary lens for translating military experience to both the public and veterans themselves. However, the diagnosis and all of its clinical appurtenances fall short of contextualizing the full range of traumas associated with military service and its treatments often fail to relieve sufferers of their symptoms. An early example of this was observed in American Indian veterans of the Vietnam War, who demonstrated marked “treatment resistance” to novel PTSD therapies that were developed in the 1980s. In response to this, a Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital in southern Puget Sound responded to requests by local tribal leaders to make indigenous healing and purification rituals available for American Indian veterans. Noting the efficacy of these rituals, a ritual community of indigenous veterans became established there who continue to practice their ceremonies today on a piece of sacred land adjacent to the VA hospital. The clinical PTSD diagnosis has evolved in accordance with medicalizing trends in the four decades since its recognition in the DSM. However, the social construct of combat trauma that is often known discursively as “PTSD” has grown and become increasingly entangled with various sociopolitical projects associated with war, gender, and racial/ethnic identity. In the 21st century, veterans increasingly prefer the signifier “warrior” over the civil term “veteran.” The warrior signifier conjures a more mythical notion of timeless, transcultural castes located in martial societies. At the same time, this warrior identity is being embraced by many outside of the military, including police and civilian defense contractors. Warriors are seen as a distinct kind of person who experiences war, suffering, and healing differently than civilians. Within this context, the combat trauma construct that is often generalized as “PTSD” becomes the fundamental marker of legitimate warrior experience. When the VA approved of making space for indigenous ceremony in the 1980s, it was because indigenous veterans were seen as denizens of “warrior cultures,” and understood to be ontologically distinct from non-indigenous veterans who were expected to heal best in a clinical environment. Until relatively recently, the ritual healing community was almost exclusive to the indigenous veterans it was created for. However, the ceremonies increasingly appeal to non-indigenous veterans and are now being seen as a therapeutic option for treatment-resistant veterans of all ethnicities. This situation creates the conditions for the complex intersection of several socioepistemological projects, including medicalization, race, indigeneity, militarism, and “warrior” identity among many other things. As a combat veteran with a PTSD diagnosis, my fieldwork centered on extended participation in the ceremonial life of this ritual community. Over a period of 36 months I made several trips to the site, including seven months of continuous fieldwork in 2019. I became close with the Elder Council, the team of experienced Native chaplains who officiate ceremonies in the ritual community. Drawing from several tribal traditions, particularly from Lakota/Plains traditions, these elders conduct sweat lodges, “talking circles,” and other ceremonies. These rituals serve a dedicated cohort of regular attendees, a segment of patients from the hospital’s inpatient PTSD program, and periodic visitors who are seeking healing after the failure of clinical therapy. My findings detail two developments: First, the ritual community exposes the limits of the 20th century process of medicalizing trauma associated with war/military service. For instance, ritual participants draw on the Lakota concept of iwáyazaŋ azúyeya, "the sickness one acquires from fighting others and the self" as the therapeutic object at stake, in contrast to "PTSD". Ceremonies directly address this sickness by highlighting Native experiences of colonization, the unique ways that trauma was experienced by Native veterans (particularly from the Vietnam War era), and the connections between violence and masculinity. Second, the site shifts the ways “warriordom” connects concepts of violence to concepts of culture. The notion that warriors are a unique kind of person who both suffer and heal differently from civilians may account for the increasing appeal of ritual therapy among non-Native veterans. However, the ceremonies compel veterans to confront warrior identity as a feature of white settler violence, and effectively turn healing into a process of social critique.

This dissertation examines a series of novels by Aminata Zaaria, Ken Bugul, Gaston-Paul Effa, Boubacar Boris Diop and Yolande Mukagasana. At the heart of my study is a problem that haunts much literary production and literary criticism about post-colonial Francophone African writing: the layers of distance and misunderstanding that often exist between readers and writers. Several of the authors in this study express frustration at the limited expectations that readers have of them, complaining that readers outside of the continent continue to read their novels solely in order to gain a grasp of socio-political "realities" of Africa. I propose a return to a select group of author's largely semi-autobiographical texts in order to better understand each writer's individual literary projects within the interdisciplinary framework of trauma studies. Interviews that I conducted with Senegalese and Cameroonian publishing directors, psychologists, sociologists and authors themselves offer an analysis of these texts within the context of broader social debates.

My first chapter focuses on Zaaria's La Nuit est tombée sur Dakar (2004) and Bugul's Le Baobab Fou (1983) and Cendres et Braises (1995) in order to examine intergenerational Senegalese semi-autobiographical representations of prostitution. My study ultimately finds that neither Senegalese society nor Zaaria and Bugul's narratives evidence healing through writing. Rather, both present literature as a "default" chosen because the authors found no one with whom they could initially share their stories face-to-face. Chapter Two hones in on Bugul's relationship with her mother, a painful theme revisited from one end of Bugul's semi-autobiographical oeuvre (Le Baobab Fou, 1982) to the other (De l'autre côté du regard, 2002). Chapter Three examines the trauma of parental loss in Gaston-Paul Effa's semi-autobiographical works, from Tout ce bleu (1996) to a more recent novel (Nous, les enfants de la tradition, 2008) in order to examine the evolution of Effa's personal identity quest and his extensive self-analysis over time in light of the author's permanent exile in France. My fourth chapter begins with a study of genocide survivor Yolande Mukagasana's recent narrative entitled N'aie pas peur de savoir (1999) in order to examine author/reader relationships in light of the often inconceivable trauma of genocide. I then move on to consider the ethics of speaking "for" genocide survivors by analyzing the well-known Senegalese author Boubacar Boris Diop's Murambi, le livre des ossements (2000) and the related Fest'Africa project. I end Chapter Four with a critique of Etoke's Melancholia africana: l'indéspensable dépassement de la condition noire (2010) in order to question whether or not sweeping theories of the various traumas experienced by members of Africa and its diaspora are in fact helpful in every context. Finally, I end my study with Effa's Voici le dernier jour du monde, which exhibits the interplay between autobiography, biography, fiction and the issue of literary violence.

I ultimately argue that a major difference between the "talking cure" of psychoanalysis and the process of seeking healing through literary narratives involves the question of audience. In the case of Sub-Saharan African literature, the author/reader relationship does not necessarily provide a safe space akin to the doctor/patient model in Freud's "talking cure." Therefore, I ultimately call for a closer analysis of the myriad ways by which authors are seeking healing and answers outside the realm of literature.

As many theologians and pastors have pointed out, there is much fertile ground to be discovered in combining worship with intentional pastoral care and vice versa. This concept of pastoral care being integrated into worship is rooted in the theology of an incarnational God who is intimately involved with our daily lives. When we worship God, we encounter God’s presence, which is inherently full of grace, mercy, and love. There are times in our lives when this encounter is desperately needed for what we refer to as “healing.” Unlike physical healing, spiritual and mental healing often requires that which goes beyond the body, yet involves the body. Worship services can offer this.

As a pastor, I have taken vows to walk with people through life, to care for and nurture them spiritually. A large part of this responsibility is leading them in worship and helping them make sense of their lives, as well as helping them find words to express their life experiences as they commune with God.

This thesis will explore how the Protestant Church has ministered to congregants (or failed to minister to them) through two specific life experiences: miscarriage and sexual abuse. Through surveys and interviews, I will share real stories and examples of how these individuals felt cared for (or uncared for). Finally, I will offer new liturgy for worship services that might offer pastoral care to people in similar situations. Each service will include liturgy, suggested music, Scripture passages recommended for a sermon, and ideas for interactive elements that will allow people to acknowledge their feelings and stand together in community while turning to God for hope and healing.

Narrative identity is the process of discovering who we are by analyzing the stories that make up our lives and the stories of how we relate to the world around us. Unfortunately, this process is quickly derailed when unexpected events cause interruptions within the narrative and send our lives into unplanned directions. These interruptions could be tragic, welcome, or they could be anywhere in between. Regardless of the benefit or misfortune of these interruptions, they all require a re-calibration of our narrative to some degree.Just as individuals form their identities based on the stories contained within their own lives, communities are also shaped by their collective narratives, which are made up of shared accomplishments, struggles, and defeats. Each member of the community contributes to its unified story by allowing their own life to shape the communal narrative in some way. This is especially true within the community of a local church, where people share, not only their history, geography, and culture, but they also share a set of values and beliefs that they live out through the practice of corporal worship and collaborative mission. When the collective narrative of the faith community is not easily understood, or when it is interrupted by circumstances that challenge the identity of the community, it is necessary for the community to recalibrate once again proclaiming who they are, what they believe, and why they believe it. Since the days of the early Church, the process of narrative identity has been developed by the telling, hearing, and exchanging of personal testimonies— individual stories of how the community’s shared faith has made an impact on a particular individual’s life. In the case of Pierce Chapel Methodist Church, the church I currently serve as Senior Pastor, the community has been faced with several challenges in the last few years. These challenges include, but are not limited to: a deep divide over how to return from the COVID shutdown, the retirement of two long-tenured pastors, and disaffiliation from a denomination that the church had called home since 1968. In the wake of these events, I have challenged the church to re-discover their communal identity by encouraging them to hear and tell their individual stories. In the summer of 2023, I preached a sermon series called Storied People. The theme of each individual sermon is reflected in each respective chapter of this thesis. After each sermon was preached, I collected the stories of individual members from the congregation as they shared their own testimonies and experiences with each other. And, since this sermon series also took place in the weeks leading up to and following Pierce Chapel’s Heritage Sunday celebration, I conducted interviews for a narrative-based video presentation, to be shown that morning. I include many of the testimonies from that presentation in the following pages. Through this practice, I and the rest of the congregation found ourselves reexamining and better understanding our church's narrative identity.