Standing in the Eye

Religious trauma, Brandi Carlile, and mystical invitations

Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness. — Gabor Maté

The power of goodness … is encouraged by a bystander, an empathetic witness who helps to prevent trauma by embodying kindness and acceptance.  — Gabor Maté

In February I went on a personal retreat to a lake house for a couple days. I needed to do some discernment about vocational questions I was carrying. In reality, I just needed space to dream and pay attention to what stirred up life and energy within me.

Normally I would have put a bunch of those giant post-it notes on several of the windows on the back of the house overlooking the lake so I could pace and write and think and pray. But I forgot them. So I made my own from some painter’s tape, markers, and some scrap pieces of paper in my satchel that had print or writing on one side.

It was off to pacing and writing and thinking and praying. When I stopped to look at a clock, several hours had passed. I could feel a current of energy — the electricity of excitement and possibility — flowing through my body.

My personal retreats are almost never like that. They are usually much more boring. They often consist of the hard work of patience, waiting, centering, and finding peace amid liminality.

One of the dreams that surfaced and energized me was doing more work around religious trauma awareness and recovery. Five years ago I couldn’t have imagined such a dream. I didn’t even have the language for it.

It took hearing the stories of religious harm from my friends and fellow church members to get my attention. To invite me to look inward and explore my own pain and wounds. To focus my doctoral research on it. To write a book about it with my doctoral supervisor, Trauma-Informed Evangelism: Cultivating Communities of Faith.

At every turn, I expected to be done. I assumed I’d be tired of religious trauma when I finished my doctoral thesis. I assumed I’d be done after I wrote a book to share the stories and learnings.

But here I was getting jazzed about helping folks learn about the nature of religious trauma, how to recover from it, how to be a healing presence, and how to cultivate communities of healing rather than harm.

This work won’t let me go. There’s more to do here. And there’s so much at stake, most of all the wellbeing of our neighbors and fellow Christians.

That night after dinner I climbed up into a big soft chair (yes, it was large enough to require climbing) and thought I’d listen to some music to wind down for the evening. I pulled up a YouTube playlist that I’d recently discovered through a trauma certification I received from Eastern Mennonite University called Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR).

I hadn’t looked at the playlist before that evening. There were more than 100 songs on the list. I scrolled through them and listened to songs by Sia, Bono, Bob Marley, John Coltrane, Mumford & Sons, and Jack Johnson.

And then I found a music video by Brandi Carlile called “The Eye.”

***

I love Brandi Carlile. So much. I saw her in concert for the first time last summer in Nashville and it was a spiritual experience. Brandi, that place, and the concertgoers were filled with so much joy and love. It just washed over me in waves throughout the evening.

In the car to and from Nashville I listened to Brandi’s memoir, Broken Horses, and heard her tell the story of her “botched baptism” at a Baptist church in rural Washington state. After a week long Bible study with the pastor, she went to the church building for her baptism ceremony. Many of her friends and family members were there to witness.

She met with Pastor Steve in a small back room, dressed in her baptismal swimsuit, to make final preparations for the ceremony. He asked if she practiced black magic or witchcraft. She thought it was a joke, but Pastor Steve wasn’t smiling. Then he asked if she practiced homosexuality. Brandi knew he knew she was gay — he even knew her girlfriend. Brandi was, in fact, the only person out of the closet in her small town.

Brandi told him she didn’t care for that word and that she was only being who she was born to be.

Pastor Steve then informed her that he couldn’t baptize her if she didn’t repent.

Brandi ran out of the church building, past all her family and friends, and never returned.

Brandi says she wasn’t mad at Pastor Steve because she actually agreed with why he did it. “I didn’t feel ‘wronged’ yet,” she said, “because I still felt wrong.” She had internalized the queer phobia she had experienced in church.

And yet, for all the spiritual abuse and religious trauma she experienced because of her queer identity, Brandi is a remarkably kind and generous person. She still describes herself as a “Jesus freak” and a mystic. She speaks of the radical gospel of forgiveness, which she has experienced herself, and which she seeks to share with others. She has formed a community of love and acceptance around her as a source of strength and resilience, and she is constantly inviting new people into it. She has walked a path of recovery and healing through the abuse and trauma.

Brandi is a beacon of hope and resilience for so many in the LGBTQ+ community (and for allies like me). In her music, she sees her queer siblings — she sees their pain, their fears, their shame, but also their courage and strength. She gives language and a beautiful voice to it all. I think that’s part of the reason why there was so much joy and love in that place. People feel seen. They feel safe. They can exist and breathe and celebrate being alive. They can feel the goodness of the music and message in their bodies.

Brandi has solidarity with them — she knows what’s it’s like. She is an empathetic witness to their pain and to their hopes. Brandi is a healing presence through her music and message. In fact, she has described what she does in her concerts as “preaching and singing.”

***

In the music video, “The Eye,” Brandi and her bandmates Phil and Tim Hanseroth stand facing the camera in front of a black background, as if they are looking right at you. Tim plays the guitar as they sing in beautiful three-part harmony.

The three verses of the song seem to speak to an old friend who has lost their way. A friend who is operating out of deep wounds from their past. A friend who has tried to run away from their problems. A friend who is heartbroken and has turned to alcohol to cope.

Tim had originally written two separate songs — the first two verses were one song; the chorus was the second song. The band decided to put the songs together, and Brandi wrote a third verse, which seems to tie the verses and chorus together.

The chorus serves as a call to courage and resilience (and even joy) in the midst of great pain, an admonition to face the suffering rather than run from it, culminating in the turn of phrase that inspires the song’s title:

You can dance in a hurricane

But only if you’re standing in the eye

As I sat there, my legs hanging off that oversized chair, watching and listening to the three of them sing to me, I began to weep. Like ugly cry. I couldn’t stop.

In the moment I wasn’t sure why. I’d listened to the song dozens of times before. I have a long history of being unaware of my emotions until they express themselves in my body and I’m left to ask, what is this? All I knew at the time was that it was connecting to something deep within me.

As I reflected on it, two senses emerged. The first was a sense of being seen by this trio, in the midst of my own hurricanes, my own coping mechanisms, my own temptations to run or hide from the pain points in my life. They can see me because they know. Along with being seen was an attending encouragement to stand in the eye, to dance, to be brave, to be resilient. My own interior work and personal trauma awareness and healing is the starting place for all the other trauma awareness and healing work I might do. If it’s not, I’ll likely be a wounded wounder instead of a wounded healer.

The second sense, and I think the realization that moved me most deeply, was the sense of receiving an invitation, through this song, from Brandi — an invitation to join her in the work she was doing, the art she was creating, that of being an empathetic witness to the pain and hopes of others, that of creating communities of love and acceptance.

This invitation is significant for someone like me — a cis-het white male — because I need to be de-centered, with my privilege and power, and join with and follow the lead of wounded healers at the margins of such power and privilege. They have the wisdom for the path and work ahead. The thought that there was a way for me to participate in this movement of love and healing was breathtaking and overwhelming. My tears were tears of joy and gratitude.

That invitation is why I’m starting this newsletter (and other things hopefully…stay tuned). To lend my hand to the good work that others like Brandi Carlile are leading us in. To be an empathetic witness to the pain of my neighbors and to invite others to do the same for the sake of healing and liberation. To help form healing communities of love and acceptance.

***

The next morning when I woke up, I went on a long walk to mull over all my dreams and thoughts from the previous day.

When I remembered “The Eye” and my tears, I was startled with wonder.

Was I visited by the divine community last night through Brandi, Tim, and Phil?

Was my heart not burning while they sang to me?