A Ritual of Healing from Childhood Sexual Abuse

Janet Walton, "Feminist Liturgy: The Possibilities It Offers," Feminist Liturgy: A Matter of Justice. 61-64.

Photo: "Bonfire under blue sky filled with stars" by Murat Onder.

Liturgy

Carol, a victim of child sexual abuse by her father, and five people she invited to be with for the ritual her gather at night on the beach around a fire.

• Reading: "Psalm 27"
• Each person draws a picture of Carol as a child, then each reflects on the image and burns the drawing. 
• Silent time to remember and imagine.
• Praying words "that speak of abuse, violence, and a God who would be faithful in the midst of powerlessness"

Liturgy

(continued)

• Carol tells her own story of abuse
• As she recalls memories, she feeds items she has chosen to symbolize the abuse (pink cloth, blue cord) into the fire. 
• Someone fills a bucket with sea water, with healing salt
• Each person passes the bucket for a cleansing action
• Each person is invited to search the beach for a symbol to give Carol, as a reminder of support for the journey ahead.

Liturgy

(continued)

• Singing Louis Rose's "Blackbird singing in the dead of night, Take these broken wings and learn to fly"
• Liturgy closes with Carol's reflection about the importance of this ritual
• Fire is extinguished
• Carol and her community walk back to the house on the beach singing "Amazing Grace"

Thoughts?

• What does this liturgy bring up for you?
• How does it connect to Lorena Parrish's "Dismantling Domination through Womanist Rituals of Resistance"?
• How does it connect to the larger argument for feminist and womanist liturgies we've been discussing this semester? 

Why is this liturgy feminist?

• Names the abuse many women and children face, but one rarely mentioned in institutional liturgies

• Liturgy does not avoid the terror of sexual abuse. Nothing was "made nice."

• Ambiguity of the divine is named: one who may or may not protect

• Space was particularly chosen and shaped as resource for healing and comfort

Why is this liturgy feminist?

(continued)

• Process of claiming, cleansing, transforming, remembering destructive relationships and of imagining redeemed relationships enacted

• Empowers Carol and others -- does not stop with Carol but draws out a spectrum of experiences from everyone who gathered

• Liturgy embodies a step toward healing

• Names and casts out evil, inspiring resistance. An act of justice.

Connect to Parrish

1. Creative Disruption

"Creative disruption entails using undistorted stories, reflections, and transcendent encounters that redeem as valid those sacred human experiences that are often pathologized"

Connect to Parrish

2. Redemptive Reconstruction

"Conceiving new visions of the self and the community while taking action for implementing new norms, values, and options ... generates cognitive dissonance between what was and what is, making room for new present and future possibilities, or what is to be"

Connect to Parrish

3. Womanist Celebration

"The community comes together to celebrate and give thanks to God and to one another for the work of reimagining, shifting, and transformation. Womanist celebration is praise for the Divine, and, as the womanist definition says, appreciation for 'the folk, roundness, food, the moon, the whole community, and all of creation, regardless.'"