| Participants experience Gods presence in hurt and healing by Yvonne J. MedleyUMConnection correspondent  A handwritten sign on off-white butcher paper hung by the door of Foundry UMC in Washington Nov. 7-9. It read simply, Convocation on Healing and Wholeness Enter Here.
The simplicity of this invitation did not hint at the wide variety of opportunities available to participants. The convocation, co-sponsored by the Baltimore-Washington Conference Council on Human Resource Development and Foundry UMC, featured a smorgasbord of interactive workshops, activities and sermons. Its objective, said Tom Smith, one of the convocations coordinators, was to give people a comprehensive vision of healing ministries. Healing can be spiritual, said Smith, It can be social in terms of relationships, on a personal level, a community level and a national level. It can be physical, where people are looking for ways to contend with disabilities, illnesses and chronic diseases. It can be mental, where people are in need of thinking differently about the way they experience life. Its a total experience.  The workshops tackled many issues, including mental illness, sexuality and wholeness, utilizing faith and science together and rebuilding shattered dreams. According to Smith, the convocation was designed to be both practical and theologically sound so that it would touch a lot of different bases.
Brenda Peters, a health consultant for CareRN, Inc. and member of the Shiloh Baptist Church in Washington, conducted a workshop on healing and wholeness for people infected with or affected by HIV/AIDS. But, she said, her calling cuts deeper. My goal is to give church leaders some fire, so-to-speak. We need church leaders to step up to the plate and do what God wants us to do and that is to provide love, Peters said. The healing extended into the lunch breaks, where participants stretched and meditated in a yoga session led by instructor Carolyn Bluemle. Yoga unlocks some of the emotional tensions, the past traumas that are held in the body, said Bluemle, who added that yoga could also be used as a form of prayer. Some participants pounded out frustrations or checked their rhythmic pulse in a drumming circle, led by Ann Fraley. She tried to inspire us to be in community with the main beat of the drum, and yet, establish a different beat, said Nae Pearson from Millian Memorial UMC in Rockville, It was great. Other participants took a respite from daily stress by resting in one of Foundrys intimate chapels, wrapped in a soft blanket of harp music played by Annie Burgard Kumar. The convocation stretched beyond societys clever clichs often used in the fight against abusive addictive behaviors. Just-say-no is not all it takes to fight an addiction, said Foundry member Wayne OHern. If youre thinking that, then youre living in a fantasy world. In a sermon, Bishop Violet Fisher of the New York West Area, said that the sick must want to be healed and willing to embrace change. To be healed is to be changed, Fisher said, Healing brings change and we all know how popular that is. During the convocation, the Rev. Dean Snyder, Foundry UMCs senior pastor, addressed the question, How can we know the will of God? There is no circumstance of life in which the will of God is absent, Snyder said during his two Sunday sermons that closed out the convocation. I was just amazed to be reminded of the amount of pain that we carry within ourselves. At the same time, in the intense workshops, I was reminded of how much resilience God has placed within us, Snyder said. If we can live through the pain, if someone would just hold our hand in the midst of the pain and give us permission to feel it and to hurt, within us is the possibility of moving through it. Weve got a lot of work to do, said convocation participant Arlene Kiely of Dumbarton UMC in Georgetown. | 
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