The Ripple Effects of Repair Work
I’m sitting with the question of how our small steps towards repair might ripple out in ever-widening healing circles through our communities, offering a “balm of possibility.”
Last year, I was invited by dear friends and colleagues to co-create and facilitate a ritual of story-telling and repair between members of BMC (Brethren Mennonite Council on LGBT Interests) and Camp Friedenswald, a Mennonite camp and retreat center in Southern Michigan, near my home.
You can read more about the process and ritual here, and I want to share some of my own reflections and learnings from co-weaving and holding this process.
For some background from their article,
“In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Brethren Mennonite Council for LGBT Interests hosted its annual retreat for young adults at Camp Friedenswald in Michigan. In 2005, the camp barred BMC from hosting Queer Camp on its grounds in response to increased backlash to queer visibility throughout the church. Concerned people across BMC and Central District Conference of Mennonite Church USA spoke out against this decision. Mutual interest in mediation was stated but never occurred.”
As a queer person who grew up deep within Mennonite church and community, I was clearly invested in this process.
These were not organizations that I was then a part of, nor was this my home community, and yet I have personally been impacted by the very dynamics that showed up in this one specific fractal that was (and is) repeating all over the wider church and world.
And so it was incredibly moving to be invited into this process, and to experience both personal and collective healing along the way, even as the facilitator.
Seeing the slow, deliberate process that allowed this ritual to even become possible was illuminating and gives us some clues about what makes this kind of reparative space possible:
“We reflected on what made this possible: a foundation of trusted relationships; a letter of unconditional apology from Friedenswald to BMC in 2023, preceded by the camp’s internal and external work toward LGBTQ+ inclusion; and BMC’s willingness to take part in reparative healing. While there are multiple ways to engage this history, we committed to engage it in a way that affirms queer and trans people. This commitment is the basis for the stories we tell.”
One of the ways I see this specific instance of repair rippling out is the learning other groups and organizations can do from paying attention to this process.
What would it be like if other church institutions, denominations, and organizations decided to tend to specific instances of harm in this intentional and relational way, guided by the key ingredients outlined above?
(If this piques something for you, I’d love to support your group or org - let’s talk about what a repair process could look like!)
As the article notes, “Our reparative process doesn’t absolve all the harm done to LGBTQ+ people or the church’s moral injury. But it may be a fractal of healing that ripples out as MC USA lives into repentance and transformation. With despair pressing upon our world in so many ways, may this act of repair be a balm of possibility.”
Another way this repair work is rippling is quite personal.
Largely because of the integrity and accountability of this healing process I have witnessed Camp Friedenswald engaging in, I am hosting this year’s Here Together: A Queer Healing Retreat on Land there this May!
This is a huge deal for me. As a queer person who grew up closeted inside of Christian spaces that were ripe for religious and other trauma, I’ve mostly stepped away from such spaces, not trusting them to hold the fullness of who I am (alongside many other concerns I carry about the ongoing violence done in the name of Christianity!).
I know this sort of woundedness is incredibly common for other queer folks, too, and so I don’t take lightly holding a retreat for queer healing connected to a Christian space.
But because of this repair process, I felt ready to take a step back towards such spaces, and clear enough to host this retreat at Camp.
And so I hope the fractal-nature of this healing and repair may continue to ripple out!
May you each be finding small ways to move towards repair in your own corners of the world, and feeling the potential for healing to ripple.