The Healing Power of Love
Nearly three decades ago, the Rev. Becca Stevens opened a home for five women survivors of trafficking, prostitution, and addiction. In making this committment, she quickly recognized that financial self-sufficiency was instrumental to their recovery, yet they could not find work because of their history. In search of a solution, she and a number of volunteers began making candles in a church basement. From that basement initiative, Thistle Farms social enterprises were born.
Since then, hundreds of women have participated in and graduated from Thistle Farms, a multi-year recovery program that includes housing, healthcare, and supportive therapy to help heal their trauma. At Thistle Farms, women are not asked, “What did you do?;” they are instead asked, “What happened to you?”
And what is the most significant element in recovery, in the healing that must take place for those women to see in themselves the image of God? What is the same element in each of our lives that allows us to heal, to forgive, and to seek a world where no human being is trafficked, used, or made to feel shame?
That element, Stevens says time and time again, is love. “Love Heals” can be found emblazoned on many of Thistle Farms’ body and home care products, from candles to oils to lip balm. Stevens believes “love is the most powerful force for change in the world . . . because love has the power to heal.”
Stevens started Thistle Farms in Nashville, but we know that this radical healing love is needed everywhere.
I am reminded of this every time I drive home on Carnegie Avenue, when I drive past Glen Infante’s “Love Can Fix It” mural, where two hands come together to form a heart. And I think of it whenever I consider of any of the painful, thorny, seemingly impossible problems we face in this world. My faith reminds me that love has the power to move mountains.
Many of us know well the pain of addiction, either as the one struggling or caring for someone who does. And many at Trinity work passionately to end the scourge of human trafficking.
Yet we can look with new eyes at the complex issues we seek to overcome by asking the question, “How might love heal this?”
The Rev. Becca Stevens (pictured above) will help us consider the power of love during several worship and forum events on October 11 and 15, and I hope you will join us during this exploration into what it means to be a source of healing and hope in our community.
The Very Rev. Bernard J. Owens