OLIVE LEAF:
OLIVE LEAF:
A WEBSITE FOR HEALING OF
SOUL, MIND, BODY TRAUMA
iktor
Frankl, in several books written both before and after Auschwitz,
discussed
the importance of meaning, rather than of sex and power, as essential
for
the health of the body, the mind, the soul. A group of us, some
members,
priests, some, monastics or formerly so, some, lawyers, some in
psychiatry,
but most of us victims in some way or other to trauma which have caused
loss of meaning, have collectively been studying the evidence. The
results:
with sudden, meaningless natural disaster, or with war trauma, or with
sexual
abuse, especially in incest or by clergy or religious, or with
birth
trauma, or with abortion, or with language
loss,
as with 'English Only', or with political
torture,
there can be an effect on individuals' souls, ranging from numbing to
depression
to alcohol and substance abuse to bipolarity to multiple personality
disorder
to suicide. The evidence is that such
trauma,
seemingly unjustifiable punishment to innocent persons, can effect
neurophysiological
changes to the chemistry of the brain and the human personality. Where
the abuse is an isolated instance it may be more easily treated and
healed,
especially if help comes soon after the event. Where the abuse has been
repeated and the condition ignored, or covered over by denial, the
prognosis
is less favourable. It can be deliberately induced in order to control
allegiance to evil.
igmund
Freud had thought the greatest drive was for sex, Alfred Adler for
power,
while Viktor Frankl spoke movingly
of
the need for meaning for true happiness. Anna Freud noted that children
involved in war-bombing needed to tell of their trauma for healing to
take
place. Sigmund Freud initially found most cases of mental illness were
caused by childhood trauma and sexual abuse within his patients'
families,
then turned away from his own discoveries, represssing them. Gradually
psychiatry has returned to Freud's initial findings, though not to his
perception as to what consists man's most important drive. It is God,
the
search for God, the love of God, which most heals. As Alcoholics
Anonymous
has found. Even if God may only be termed one's 'Higher Power'. But for
many that royal road has been destroyed with terrible land mines,
injuring
innocents, maiming and killing bodies, minds and souls. Religion itself
is infected with trauma-inducing practices for evil. It has been
deliberately
made meaningless. One loses God where one considers oneself superior to
others, one causes the loss of God to others where they are despised,
why
Pharisees so angered Christ. God despises nothing he has made. To love
one's neighbour as oneself is to find God. Julian's 'even-Christian',
even
beyond that boundary, include the Samaritan, the woman,
the leper, the Gypsy, the child, the Syro-Phoenician, the cripple, the
famine victim, the broken as well as the whole, the marginalized at the
centre.
ur
particular group, dealing with trauma within churches by clergy, found
that we could in turn help others in similar situations at the onset,
victims
of bomb trauma and other disasters, where victims are innocent and the
deaths and injuries meaningless punishment. We have sent blessed olive
leaves to Nairobi, Kenya, to Omagh, Ireland,
to Göteborg, Sweden,
Melbourne,
Australia.
Many individuals worldwide now possess these fragile small blessed
olive
leaves from Montebeni and Settignano in Italy. They became bookmarks
in Bibles in Kenya. They work between warring nations, within warring
nations,
between warring families, within warring families. We have particularly
turned to theology for this healing, as ourselves wounded healers. In
the
life and teachings of Christ, who lived and died, traumatically, under
oppression and injustice, we see a mirror
held
up to our own time. Our perspective is both Christian and ecumenical,
based
on the Sacraments, the Gospel,
upon simplicity and charity, the love of God and
neighbour, recognizing no boundaries, God despising nothing that is
created. Even the chrism of the Messiah is made from the fruit of these
trees, with which we too are 'Christened'. We see in our work that we
are
dealing with the seeds of war, racism, terrorism, rape,
abortion,
madness and much else, and that with greater understanding of such
trauma
and its effects it could become possible to help heal individuals and
nations.
Olive
leaves come literally from those at Gethsemani in Israel and these
around Montebeni and Settignano in Italy. They reflect Ezechiel 47.13
and
Revelation 22.2 of the heavenly Jerusalem's leaves for the healing of
the
nations.
his
website is yours!
It
is open to victims of such trauma and to those seeking ways to end such
meaninglessness. Its methods are drawn from the healing by each other
of
Alcoholics
Anonymous. It draws as
well upon the observations of Anna Freud and
Leslie Marmon Silko, of the therapy of the telling of tales. Writers, Julian
of Norwich,
Charlotte
Bronte and her sisters,
Emily and Anne,
Elizabeth
Barrett Browning,
Nathanael
Hawthorne, Fyodor Dosteivsky, Virginia Woolf, and Alice Walker,
orchestrated
their own great abuse and its 'Logotherapy' healing with that of their
readers. In the Sacrament of Baptism all are equal. Where one group,
whether
because of gender, handicap, class, language, education, race or
nation,
is held to be less than another, trauma is inflicted. Christianity is
based
on the outsider, Peter speaking the despised Galilean dialect, Mary
Magdalen
as the fallen woman, Jairus' twelve-year-old daughter, the woman in the
Synagogue, 'daughter-of-Abraham', stooped with osteoporosis, unable to
climb the stairs to the woman's galley, the woman with the issue of
blood
touching Christ's prayer shawl fringe, the Syro-Phoenician woman
speaking
of crumbs for puppies under the table, the Samaritans (the woman at the
well, the man on the road), the leper, and the thief on the cross.
Christianity's
God includes and heals all in the One Body of Christ, Son of Adam,
Ben-Adam,
our brother, who says we in doing the will of the Father are his
brothers,
sisters and mother. But churchmen and women may err in practicing
exclusiveness,
being Cain rather than Abel, in so doing destroying religious faith for
others and themselves. We seek to heal Cain into the resurrection of
Abel.
We invite submissions of essays, stories, and reviews. We can send blessed
oliveleaves
to
all those in need of them. They are especially beneficial to their
recipients
if given in turn to their abusers - for their healing. And to abusers,
dead or alive, - for this illness can last beyond a lifetime. Sometimes
we may need to heap graves with blessed olive leaves. Friedrich
Nietzsche,
in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, wrote: 'For that man be delivered
from
revenge, that is for me the bridge to the highest hopes and a rainbow
after
long storms'. Likewise the healing stories
submitted
to this website are never vengeful, victims being literally truthful,
but
with healing coming to retell their trauma as poetry: 'Pearls are like
poets' tales, disease turned into loveliness', Isak Dinesen wrote.
I believe this is what Julian of Norwich did
in her Showing
of Love.
CLICK ON THE ESSAY TITLES
BELOW TO READ THEIR CONTENTS:
Education for New
Zealand's
Indigenous Peoples
The Survivors' Webring: Let the Truth Ring Out
Kuzungukazunguka Kenya Webring site
Click for-sites,
including Erna Beck's
Blessed olive trees, Piazzale
Donatello
n
the banks, on both sides of the
river, there will grow all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will
not
wither nor their fruit fail, but they will bear fresh fruit every
month,
because the water for them flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will
be
for food, and their leaves for healing. Ezekiel 47.12
hen
the angel showed me the river
of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God
and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either
side of the river is the tree of life, with its twelve kinds of fruit,
producing its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree are for the
healing of the nations. Revelation 22.1-2
he
wrongdoers shall be sternly
punished. As for those that have faith and do good works, they shall be
admitted to gardens watered by running streams, in which, by their
Lord's
leave, they shall abide for ever. Their greeting shall be: 'Peace!' Koran
14.23
Mosaic
of God's Lamb, the Tree and
the Water of Life
Blessed Olive Branch, Kenyan
olive-
wood bowl, William Morris Print
