Sacred Struggle - A Conversation with Melissa Inouye
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- Опубликовано: 25 июл 2024
- As we’ve gotten to know her over the past few years, we’ve noticed that Melissa Inouye, in any group, has a remarkable way of reorienting a conversation. She tends to be the one with the eyes to see “the least of these.” She has a profound and sincere empathy for those who are in deep struggle, those on the edges, the marginalized, the looked-over, the passed-by. When these people and their difficulties are invisible to others, she gently call others’ attention to them as well.
That uniquely empathetic perspective she brings has found a beautiful expression in her new book Sacred Struggle: Seeking Christ on the Path of Most Resistance. It’s a “treatise on trials” - one in which Melissa asks the deepest, most difficult questions without shying away from them, including those around her own experience with cancer.
The book, and the conversation we had with Melissa, deal with struggle itself, but also with its second-order effects: how can struggle be alchemized into connectedness - into Zion - instead of driving us apart? Who gets to assign meaning to struggle? Is there a way to avoid pain in a community, or is it built into the experience?
Melissa received her Ph.D. from Harvard in 2011 and became a Senior Lecturer in Asian Studies at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. She’s now working as a historian for the Church History department.
We were grateful, as we always are, to benefit from her deep wisdom born of lived experience.
I'm one of Melissa Inouye's former students from the University of Auckland. I have to say she is one of the most impressive and devoted teachers I've ever had. Hoping someday for another chance to take a class from her.
“She tends to be the one with eyes to see the least of these” =]
"Let the person in pain say whatever they want." ❤❤❤🎉
I really liked the analogy of driving on the curvy road and the need for leaders to be more empathetic in how their actions impact others. I think the analogy goes both ways. It is super important for leaders to slow down and consider the experience of others. It is also important for those experiencing motion sickness to focus to the best of their ability on the road in front. Having an eternal perspective can help alleviate some of the stomach-turning in the same way that looking ahead instead of down at our phone or a book can help someone in the backseat of a car.
"We often ascribe to God a lucifer-like role." That was an epiphany for me. That we philosophize Him into controlling our path in every way. That is why I so dislike attributing my trials to God. He SAVES us from them, and yes, He put us here to experience them, but I have difficulty believing He orchestrates our PAIN as much as we seem to think. He is so merciful. He saves! I LOVE your beautiful perspective that your pain has given you! (And what mine has done for me as well.) And I LOVE that you said we each get to identify our own lessons from our pain. It is deeply personal - and God teaches us so very individually. In that way our destiny is customized, but NOT in the trials put before us. Just my opinion. Just my theory. Thanks for sharing yours! ❤
I so, so, so love this too! I'm glad to hear it resonated with you as well.
I don't know what your trial and pain are like. I know I have to work SO hard to embrace my own agency. I'm healing from childhood sexual abuse, so my concepts of my own power and agency are all flipped upside down. In a recent part of my life, I kept asking God what His will was, and He would not answer me. I made no progress until I began to realize He expected me to choose and act without reassurance. He expects me to find my own voice and know what I want.
Now I know why God named the church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and not just the Church of Jesus Christ. We are the church of Jesus Christ, our Lord, who is interacting with a collection of people at this time, and since 1830 - the Latter Day Saints - doing the best we can.