For my MA and then my unfinished PhD theis, I wrote about how the emotion we label as Shame can affect us in speaking our second languages. It's a lot more complicated that than sentence above, but more or less that's what I wrote about.

    Reading all the materials I did, papers, books, talks and more, I realized how much shame, named or unamed, is a motivating factor for so much what we do or do not do as adults. And, I can remember intense moments of shame in my own life, that have somehow defined who I am, or am not.

    One of the fascinating elements of faith, and especially if you are not focused on the Christian institutions, but rather Christ himself, is His whole ministry focused on love and not following what a shame-based culture said he should and shouldn't do.

    He should have never touched a woman who was bleeding, dead bodies, lepers, and women in general. But he did. And they were made whole, healed, raised from the dead and blessed.

    He should have never contradicted the religious leaders of the day, but he did with great boldness and firmess, so much so, one crept over to see him in the middle of the night and hence our most famous verse how much God loves the world, not the elect, the religious, the white man, no, the world.

    And finally, like one later verse discusses, he disregarded all of the shame and died a public, naked, painful death in front of all and told criminals they could hang out with him in eternity.

    Right now our world is so messed up. My dear sweet Uncle Jack used to say, World war 4, coming! And he was right. We have major, bloody conflicts in different elements of the Middle East, Ukraine and Russia grind on, and South America has different parts slowly boiling over, sending thousands of families walking north for hope for a future.

     Healing and wholeness is something we long for, we look for in our daily routines and habits, our therapists and holy people, our friends and family. And the more and more messed up this world gets, the more we need nealing.

    But healing requires touch, whether it be physical or psychological, its needs touch. And to touch someone in such a way requires both parties to be free of their own shame and guilt. It's not easy.