The Soul of Shame: Retelling the Stories We Believe About Ourselves

by Curt Thompson

Carl Rogers and Henri Nouwen have said that those things that are most personal are most universal. There is no greater evidence for this than when someone reveals the shame he or she carries while gathered in a group of safe, expectant listeners. I have said elsewhere that we all are born into the world looking for someone looking for us, and that we remain in this mode of searching for the rest of our lives. When we acknowledge our shame, it resonates with the shame carried by all of us. With confession, it is given the opportunity for resonance, exposure and healing in the life of the listener as well as the speaker. True goodness and beauty emerge when healing takes place at all levels of human awareness, which necessarily includes our individual as well as communal life. They are inseparable. This is what it means to be made in God’s image. And this is what it means for us to live like God: to practice asking questions, the mission being not to find the right answers, important as they are, so much as to be more connected.