Rostered Ministers Gathering
"What I Want You to Know": Sharing and Understanding Narratives of Moral Suffering and Injury
The Rev. Aaron Fuller, CHC, USNR
Congregations and rostered leaders have been through a lot since the COVID-19 pandemic. Polarized politics, social divisions, sustainability and economic uncertainties, Christian Nationalism — the list goes on. We talk freely about how these experiences cause burnout and affect our mental and physical health, but our questions about goodness, meaning and assumptions about right and wrong are often unspoken. When we don't have a place to share and process these unspoken questions, moral injury—a violation of our fundamental beliefs about the God, the world and each other—can cause devastating suffering, fracture relationships and erode our moral character.
In this workshop, you'll learn collective, relational ways to process experiences of moral suffering and have a chance to gain a deeper understanding of the concept of moral injury for you and those to whom you minister. By learning to express these deep, often-unspoken moral struggles, we get opportunities for repair and reconciliation that can heal the fractures in our relationships, communities and world.
Chaplain Aaron Fuller has been studying moral injury since 2016 and is a current educator and lecturer addressing the individual, interpersonal and institutional effects of moral injury in both the military and religious institutional contexts.
1 hour