In 2013, before the siege in Zamboanga City that destroyed part of the city and displaced thousands of peoples with hundreds of killings, I remember that by a very strange coincidence, Silsilah offered training on “Trauma Healing” for three hundred teachers of DepEd in three different seminars.
These teachers during the siege, and had been invited by DepEd to help many with their skills. In that occasion, Silsilah prepared the manual “Trainers Training on Trauma Healing”. In the foreword of the book, I wrote:
Guided by its “dream” to live and promote the Culture of Dialogue, Path to peace, starting from a personal transformation and moving to a sustainable social transformation, the Silsilah Dialogue Movement has helped many Christians and Muslims to experience and share what they have learned about living a life in dialogue.
Some may be surprised why Silsilah is now publishing this Trainor’s Training Manual on trauma healing. This manual is a new effort of the Movement to promote dialogue and peace as fruits of a spiritual understanding of life that harmonizes human and spiritual aspiration of each person belonging to different cultures and religions. Helping people to overcome trauma is related to what we are promoting.
It is a “harmony” based on dialogue as an expression of love of God, love of self, love of others and love of creation. Trauma enters the life of a person or group when a critical situation or experience becomes acute and beyond the normal stage of crisis. As it is presented in the manual, trauma can be caused by different painful “events” that often break dialogue with the self or with God, with others and with creation.
One of the steps taken by Silsilah years ago is the establishment of the Center for holistic Health care (CHHC) which developed from the attention given by Silsilah to “Dialogue with Creation” or “ecology in creation” and the desire to popularize the importance of simple and concrete ways to cure illnesses with resources coming from the land and the experience of our people about attaining holistic health that involves lifestyle, food and a more scientific and basic medical formation that for us is a “dialogical way” of life.
The holistic care approach challenged us to care for the “ecology of the heart” and we started to conceptualize a project on trauma healing with the challenge to help people to become “wounded healers”. We encouraged people to overcome problematic or traumatic experiences and out of their own healing experience learn to have a compassionate heart, to offer psychological and spiritual guidance to people so as help then overcome any form of trauma. Thus in helping others they act as “wounded healers”.
Today there is an invisible enemy called COVID19 that has caused a lot of death and fear. It is a new reality that needs proper answers starting from the government and other sectors of society. All of us are victims of this “new siege”. In this situation today, Silsilah tries to share the same spiritual principle presented in the manual on “Trauma healing” and will prepare a training online to invite many to become “wounded healers”. This is our plan. Meanwhile, we invite all to continue to do their best to assist spiritually those in need in the family, neighbor and all possible ways. A lot can be done. In this connection, we also wish to receive “Stories of Change” to those who have some goal experience to share. We will give more guidelines to those who are willing to write some stories of change. You may email us at silsilahdialogue@gmail.com .
All of us are learning how we can do more and together, but all of us have to remember that the first step is to be close to others with a “listening heart” and learn more the importance of dialogue with all, rich and poor, Muslims and Christians and Indigenous Peoples. This is a concrete mission that Silsilah and the Episcopal Commission for Interreligious Dialogue of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP-ECID) with other groups and friends are doing.
We believe that in line with this plan, we have to start to think about the World Interfaith Harmony Week 2021 that usually is celebrated the first week of February. This can be an occasion to do things in line with this spirit to become “wounded healers” ready to move with a “listening heart”.
Fr. Sebastiano D’Ambra, PIME
Founder, Silsilah Dialogue Movement
Executive Secretary, Episcopal Commission for Interreligious Dialogue of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP-ECID)