Just a little about this book and why I wrote it. In the coming weeks and months, I’ll dive deeper into contemplative healing, the writings of Julian of Norwich, neuroscience and modern trauma therapy. Consider it a sort of a-mystic-a-neuroscientist-and-a-trauma-therapist-walk-into-a-bar kind of journey together. These three collide in the most beautiful of ways, offering us a way of living and being together in co-suffering, self-giving love that heals us and might even heal our world.

Our experience as humans is saturated with trauma. We feel it in the air these days. It is in our bodies. It is in our collective experience. Divisions, strife, violence, poverty, sickness, shame and deep sadness of soul all leave us alienated from ourselves, from others and from God. How on earth will we ever heal?

Over decades, I’ve journeyed with many in healing through so many types of prayer. And what I’ve learned, or mostly unlearned, over the past 12 plus years as Founder and Director of an inner healing ministry in Cincinnati, is that the kind of space I carry within me and the kind of space I hold with others is the primary activating point of healing. And I think Julian, neuroscientists, trauma experts, and even early Church Fathers and Mothers would agree.

This book is the summation of the research and reading done over three years to complete my MA in Theology and Culture at St. Stephen’s University. Here, I discovered ancient and modern embodied truths all pointing to the things I’d “discovered” by experience and observation. So many lightbulbs going off. Light breaking in. We are created to live face to face with co-suffering love in the face of God and one another. Here our trauma and alienation are healed. Here we become progressively more fully human together.

Let’s journey together deeper into the love that heals us.