The Wound and the Gaze: Trauma Theology, Contemplative Healing, and Becoming Beloved / Bo Karen Lee

About this episode

Bo Karen Lee discusses the intersection of trauma and spirituality, emphasizing the healing power of community and contemplative practices.

Theologian Bo Karen Lee joins Ryan McAnnally-Linz to explore how the multiple layers of trauma—pandemic grief, racialized violence, intergenerational wounding, vicarious suffering—can be met by the resources of Ignatian spirituality and contemplative prayer. Writing and teaching at the intersection of Christian formation and social justice, Lee brings both scholarly precision and uncommon personal candor to one of the most urgent conversations in theology today. "Trauma tends to isolate and alienate us from our siblings, our human siblings. But ironically, this witnessing of one another's pain is the source of healing. So it has the very opposite effect of what is needed for it to be healed." In this conversation, Lee reflects on the spiritual journey from what one author calls "alarmed aloneness" toward becoming beloved—seen, held, and gazed upon with love. Together they discuss the overlapping layers of collective, personal, racialized, and intergenerational trauma shaping contemporary life; attachment theory and its parallels with spiritual formation; the Ignatian tradition of imaginative, contemplative prayer; the still face experiment and the theology of the loving gaze; and…

People in this episode

Hosts: Ryan McAnnally-Linz, Miroslav Volf, Evan Rosa, Macie Bridge

Guest: Bo Karen Lee

Topics covered

• trauma theology
• contemplative healing
• Ignatian spirituality
• social justice
• collective trauma
• spiritual formation

Keywords

• trauma
• healing
• spirituality
• contemplative prayer
• social justice
• attachment theory
• Christian formation

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Yale Center for Faith & Culture

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