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

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 why the church has something singular to offer the trauma crisis of our time.

Episode Highlights

"We are quite sure we're alone in the world and no one really sees us, no one truly cares and no one can be trusted. You're alone, overwhelmed, and helpless."

"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."

"I need to be held, but it's this illusory figure that holds me, because I have shut myself off to the very things that could help me, because no one is to be trusted."

"I've seen too much hope, and too much beauty, and too much healing walking through the spiritual exercises that I can no longer despair that trauma has the final word."

"Gazing upon the God who gazes upon me with love. That is contemplative prayer."

About Bo Karen Lee

Bo Karen Lee is Associate Professor of Spiritual Theology and Christian Formation at Princeton Theological Seminary, where she teaches contemplative theology, Ignatian spirituality, and the relationship between prayer and social justice. A leading voice in the integration of trauma studies and Christian formation, she brings the Ignatian tradition into conversation with psychology, attachment theory, and the lived experience of racialized communities. Her work draws on the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola to offer resources for healing that are both theologically grounded and pastorally immediate. She directs retreatants in the nineteenth annotation of the Spiritual Exercises and works regularly with spiritual directors trained in the Ignatian tradition.

Helpful Links and Resources

Bessel van der Kolk, Traumatic Stress: The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body, and Society https://www.amazon.com/Traumatic-Stress-Overwhelming-Experience-Society/dp/1572300485

Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score https://www.besselvanderkolk.com/resources/the-body-keeps-the-score

Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother's Hands https://www.resmaa.com/resources

Kathy Weingarten, Common Shock: Witnessing Violence Every Day https://www.kathyweingarten.com

David Fleming SJ, Draw Me Into Your Friendship https://www.amazon.com/Draw-Me-Into-Your-Friendship/dp/0912422904

Ignatius of Loyola, The Spiritual Exercises https://www.ignatianspirituality.com/ignatian-prayer/the-spiritual-exercises/

Edward Tronick, Still Face Experiment https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apzXGEbZht0

Find a Spiritual Director https://www.ignatianspirituality.com/making-good-decisions/find-a-spiritual-director/

Show Notes

• Trauma defined: "terror triggered by an inescapably stressful event that overwhelms existing coping mechanisms" — Bessel van der Kolk
• Layers of trauma: collective pandemic grief, personal wounding, racialized violence, intergenerational encoding, vicarious/secondary trauma
• Global pandemic as collective trauma — threat of death, forced isolation, planetary-scale overwhelm
• Racialized trauma and AAPI hate incidents — one in five AAPI individuals reported a hate incident in the U.S. in a 15-month window (as of late 2021)
• My Grandmother's Hands by Resmaa Menakem — racialized trauma encoded in bodies and communities https://www.resmaa.com/resources
• Cumulative microaggressions — daily small injuries can produce PTSD-level effects over time; growing body of clinical literature
• Secondary/vicarious trauma — hearing others' suffering reactivates unresolved wounds in caregivers and companions
• "Double jeopardy" — Kathy Weingarten's term for caregivers whose own past traumas are reactivated while supporting others
• Five professions at highest risk: clergy, health workers, teachers, police, journalists — context for the Great Resignation
• "Alarmed aloneness" — the net effect of trauma: certainty that no one sees you, no one cares, no one can be trusted
• "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."
• The orphan image: a girl in a Middle Eastern orphanage draws a chalk mother around her fetal body — illusory comfort as portrait of traumatic isolation
• Intergenerational trauma — encoded in DNA; personal testimony about learning her own mother was nearly killed as an infant, its echo across generations
• Kintsugi as healing metaphor — the Japanese art of mending broken pottery with gold; grief before repair, not a race to be fixed
• Robert Stolorow's concept: finding a "relational home" for traumatic suffering — the necessity of being witnessed
• Ignatius of Loyola — 16th-century Spanish soldier wounded by cannonball; encountered the living Christ through Ludolph of Saxony's Vita Christi during convalescence
• The Spiritual Exercises: a four-week manual for imaginative prayer — beloved and broken, walking with Christ through ministry, suffering, resurrection https://www.ignatianspirituality.com/ignatian-prayer/the-spiritual-exercises/
• Ignatian contemplative prayer defined: "gazing upon the God who gazes upon me with love" — kataphatic, embodied, not requiring stillness or silence
• Still Face Experiment (Edward Tronick) — infant distress when a loving mother goes blank; evidence that the gaze of love is neurologically and psychologically foundational https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apzXGEbZht0
• Attachment theory and spiritual formation — earned secure attachment: what unhealthy early bonding cannot provide, sustained relationship with God can
• "I've seen too much hope, and too much beauty, and too much healing walking through the spiritual exercises that I can no longer despair that trauma has the final word."
• Personal testimony: AAPI hate crimes, night terrors, contemplative prayer with a spiritual director; a vision of Mary, the wailing women, and the crucified Christ
• "Bo, they killed me too" — Christ's words in a contemplative vision; solidarity as the beginning of bearable grief
• Sartre's "hell is other people" reframed — parasitic dependence on others' approval vs. the freedom of knowing how God gazes upon you
• Resources for beginning: David Fleming's Draw Me Into Your Friendship; finding a spiritual director trained in Ignatian spirituality; Jesuit retreat centers

#TraumaHealing #IgnatianSpirituality #ContemplativePrayer #ChristianFormation #SpiritualTheology #MentalHealthAndFaith #RacializedTrauma #AttachmentTheory #ForTheLifeOfTheWorld #YaleDivinity

Production Notes

• This podcast featured Bo Karen Lee
• Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
• Hosted by Evan Rosa
• Production Assistance by Annie Trowbridge and Luke Stringer
• A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about
• Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give