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	My Spiritual Metamorphosis Healing and Spirituality November 30, 2009 http://jjromo.wordpress.com/ Introduction I recently heard a presentation about quantum shifts in consciousness as well as in technology that are appearing around the world. The speaker discussed nanotechnology and environmental breakthroughs, such as edible clothing in New Zealand, and window panes in Scotland that extract energy from the wind and sun. He was particularly excited about recent scientific discussions about the metamorphosis of a butterfly. While I don't recall the technical details, I was impressed with how similar the story he told was to my own spiritual life journey. I'll approximate the story, conscious that it is not a perfect scientific explanation, but with the understanding that it describes a spiritual process that may be useful for others as they struggle with the impact of abuse by religious authorities at individual and/ or a collective level. In short, it is inaccurate to say that a butterfly is a Caterpillar with wings. Similarly, is inaccurate for me to describe myself as a religious or spiritual person with simply more wisdom than I had before dealing with the religious authority sexual abuse in my life. The caterpillar develops as a caterpillar does. It crawls and eats and produces other caterpillars. However at one point, it eats a tremendous amount, and then spins a cocoon around itself. During the time the Caterpillar is in its cocoon, a radical decomposition takes place. Cells begin to consume and digest one another and bring about chemical changes to the caterpillar, in effect, destroying the Caterpillar as it once was. During this process, some cells in the Caterpillar body remain dormant and do not interact or react with this decomposition or chemical reaction. These are now being called imaginal cells. When the decomposition process has run its course, the various imaginal cells reawaken and begin to work together to reconstruct what will become a butterfly. I don't know how this happens, but it was intuitively obvious to me. The speaker gave the analogy of taking a bicycle that needs repair to a bicycle repair shop and coming back a few days later. But instead of a new bicycle, the repair shop worker presents a jet and says, 'Here you are.' While they may have some common elements and material similarities, in reality there is a quantum leap in this new construction from what it once was. My professional journey From the time I left seminary in 1984, I worked towards the dream of bringing social justice and bringing the incarnation of God into the world through education. I am familiar with other educator's stories, such as Dr. Henry Trueba, an educational giant in many scholars' eyes, who also brought their spiritual journeys to education. "Influenced by Paulo Freire and my colleagues associated with him (Donaldo Macedo, Moacir Gadotti, Peter McLaren, Henry Giroux, and many others) I began to deconstruct my previous experiences. I soon realized that I was still a priest, and that my commitment to students' intellectual growth was advocated in lieu of my previous vocation to proselytize and convert, and in lieu of nurturing spiritually Christian souls, I would nurture the intellectual life of students." (Romo, Bradfield, and Serrano, 2004, p. 28. I was also a zealous and dedicated advocate for kids, working under the vision of bringing institutional transformation that would promote equity and inclusion and the realization of social justice in practice and policy. I work for 23 years as a middle and high school teacher, as a middle and high school administrator, and as a university teacher education professor. Similarly, by religious zeal manifested itself in my life in an informal Christian community, where we shared resources and ministry to refugee and homeless families. When I married, worked in retreats, and was active in my local parish and youth ministry. My wife and I took our children to work in the parish soup kitchen regularly. When we became less satisfied with the traditional liturgies and dogmatic practices, we participated in a home church group led by a married priest. As a professor, I invested more time and effort to research innovative teaching practices and scholarship, and I had less involvement with parish activities. During the summer of 2002, I participated in a week long program called the Collegium. It was a gathering of faculty who worked at Catholic Universities. We discussed various topics related to academic life in the context of Catholic universities. During this time, the clergy abuse scandal from Boston was in the news daily. My flashbacks began around that time. Some memories of my abuse were triggered by seeing my sons sleeping shirtless; they were about the age I was when I was abused. I had some basic and crude understanding of my abuse at that point, which I mistakenly interpreted as life experiences that I could manage or had processed indirectly in previous therapy related to family of origin issues such as alcoholism or relationship with my father. Later that summer, I called a phone number on the L.A. Archdiocesan webpage to let someone know what I thought s/he must want to know in order to help others. I got a message that the call could not be completed. I searched the webpage for an e-mail contact or other phone number to call someone about my report. I e-mailed the webmaster, the only contact I could find contact, and the webmaster reported back to me that he had forwarded the information to the appropriate person. On my birthday, I received a call from the diocesan Victims' Assistance Coordinator, who asked me what I wanted. This was during what I consider the prime of my academic career. I was published, teaching well, involved in statewide and international teacher education conferences and research. During the course of the next year, I contacted an attorney who advised me to file a police report and put me in touch with the local leader of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP). That spring, I drove between San Diego and Los Angeles Counties to attend support meetings, where I heard my own story in graphic detail through many others' stories. The following summer, again on my birthday, I met with other survivors who were organizing outreach and advocacy efforts in southern California. They told me what they wanted to do and asked me to help. With great trepidation, I led a leafleting campaign outside the San Diego Police Department and led my first press conference shortly afterwards. I began leading efforts to draw attention to abuse at local parishes, regular press conferences, and support meetings. I also wrote letters to newspaper editors and began fielding regular calls by victims of clergy abuse. All of this activity fell under my vision of bringing social justice and to protect children; it was service to my community. In part, it was a way to channel the rage that was consciously opening up in me. My depression and rage made it difficult to manage my emotional landmines. I was working at Catholic University where the bishop sat on the Board of Trustees. I was aware that some trustees questioned the supportability of any faculty member who might be involved with clergy abuse in the diocese. I was driven to earn tenure, to established a new educational research field called Border Pedagogy (i.e., examining complex educational and sociopolitical issues involved in the San Diego-Tijuana region), and to bring accountability within all churches beginning with the Catholic Church related to clergy abuse. During the fall 2005 I was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). I dragged myself to a psychiatrist for this diagnosis when I could no longer conceal or deny to myself that I could not read or effectively remember lectures and educational material that had become second nature to me over the previous ten years of teacher education. I was on emotional edge in my Catholic university environment, working and conflicting with tenured colleagues who reminded me of church hierarchy. During spring 2006, I took a medical leave of absence and worked intensively with therapy and medication to get better. I returned to my work at the end of the spring, 2006 and resumed my research, conference management, and teaching full time in the fall. Shortly after the 2006-2007 academic year ended, I received notification that I would not be reappointed, which circumvented my bid for tenure. I had just co- directed an international conference. The notice was a kind of dagger into my heart. I appealed to the Provost and my appeal was denied. I was encouraged by activists in the clergy abuse community to sue the University, which I believe would have been 'won,' if that can be assessed. But I did not sue. I had worked for four years with the frustration of the legal process with the Catholic Church and I refrained from pursuing more legal action, contrary to my fresh desire for revenge. My Spiritual Metamorphosis When I recently heard the story about the metamorphosis of the caterpillar to the butterfly, I recognized my own metamorphosis. I had overindulged in public advocacy, media contact, mentoring and trying to get more activism out of survivors than they were able or willing to give with respect to their own abuse. In other words, I was burned out from calling people to come to press conferences or speak up, so that more faces than my own would be identified and heard with respect to ending abuse. During my activity as an advocate and spokesperson for clergy abuse victims, I became involved with a local United Church of Christ (UCC) church. I was desperate and spiritually starved. I missed the bliss I once knew from my seminary days and I was alienated from what was once my spiritual and social justice community. At a more basic level, I lost whatever I had known as peace of mind. My leave of absence in 2006, before I had begun meditation, became my cocoon from my life of being a victim and survivor, which was both validating and clarifying as well as limiting. This life as a victim or survivor was validating because it was the first time I could see how my abuse could happen, how it impacted me, and how I had impacted others. It was limiting because I could not relate to others in a more expansive way, and it was emotionally toxic. My leave was a valuable, intensive time to convalesce, and reconcile and integrate my various experiences, roles, and ways in which I identified myself. In retrospect, this process set the stage for me to move forward in a very different way. During this time, my new church became known nationally when a registered sex offender came to the church and asked to be permitted to worship there. I took up a role of a spiritual support team member, and met with this person weekly. That experience was re- traumatizing as well as one of the more significant efforts that I had ever made towards reconciling painfully different perspectives and letting go of my own sexual abuse trauma cocoon. In February, 2008, my wife and I participated in a Chopra Center program called, "Healing the Heart." I went out of pure frustration and desperation with my professional and marital life. The program impacted me profoundly and I felt some of the rage lift from my spirit. The program introduced me to Primordial Sound Meditation and I began a regular meditation practice that gave me some simple peace of mind. Two months later, I participated in a six-day program that was meditation intensive. I would describe this as my spiritual metamorphosis process, wherein the tensions of being a survivor and a survivor advocate, as well as my various emotional demands deconstructed who I was. By the time I participated in the six- day meditation program, I was as good as dead. Or at least my identity as a teacher educator and tenure-track faculty member and Border Pedagogy researcher was dead. It was then that the imaginal cells, my spirit, God's Spirit, began to bring about a new state of being in me. Since then, I have continued in this expansive process. At this point, my meditation practice is a way for me to breathe and expand spiritually, like a butterfly opening and closing its wings while resting. Closing Thoughts Meditation has helped me to learn some very important spiritual lessons in the past several months: That my life is unfolding and made up of pure potentiality (i.e., if I'm be flexible, willing to change, learn, and apply what I learn); that I need to take care of myself before I work effectively with others; that it is more important for me to be happy (with my mind, heart and soul connected) than disconnected and right—the first takes more time. I've learned that peace is possible and difficult, as it requires lots of letting go and re-writing the scripts that have been so familiar for so long. I have learned that I am much more than my titles, positions or possessions, or experiences (good and bad). Therapy and emotionally healing processes have helped me to sift out and let go of ways of thinking or behaving that are not useful to become something else, something bigger. I believe that this letting go process is critical for the expansive process that comes through my spiritual practice to be transformative at quantum levels. The quantum shift shows me that I am. Before life and after death, I am. I think I understand what Marianne Williamson wrote: "You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others." My point in sharing some of my life experience is that because I have developed a deeper clarity about who I am, I have been able to move forward with a deeper happiness and peace than I ever imagined possible at the beginning of my abuse flashbacks. Just as it is inaccurate to say that a butterfly is a Caterpillar with wings, it is inaccurate for me to describe myself as a religious or spiritual person with simply more wisdom than I had before dealing with the religious authority sexual abuse in my life. My intention is to promote the end of sexual abuse everywhere. I am honored to take up this work with you in your journey of healing.
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