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Anti-apartheid activist, bombing survivor Rev. Michael Lapsley to host Cedar Rapids workshops on racial reconciliation, trauma healing
How one priest shares his story and facilitates healing throughout the world
Elijah Decious
Apr. 12, 2024 6:00 am, Updated: Apr. 12, 2024 6:03 pm
- The Rev. Michael Lapsley, an Anglican priest and anti-apartheid activist in South Africa, survived a letter bomb sent by the South African apartheid regime in 1990.
- Through his own experience and the needs of fellow South Africans, Lapsley developed a method to help heal trauma through story telling for South Africans, after decades of brutal racial oppression.
- Today, Lapsley travels the world to facilitate workshops with the Institute for Healing of Memories.
- Lapsley will hold several lectures and workshops throughout the next week in Cedar Rapids. The free events are open to the public.
Nearly 34 years after he lost his hands and sight in one eye to a letter bomb, the Rev. Michael Lapsley knows that healing isn’t the end of a journey after traumatic wounds — it’s only the beginning.
The costly piece of wisdom has come in the years since April 1990, when the anti-apartheid Anglican priest was nearly killed by the South African apartheid regime with the weapon disguised as a religious magazine — just three months after fellow activist Nelson Mandela was released from prison.
“I remember the pain of a scale I didn’t think a human being could experience,” said Lapsley, who had been ministering to segregated college students in South Africa since the early 1970s. “I remember going into darkness, being thrown back by the force of the bomb.”
While the wounds of racial oppression for him and many others may have started in South Africa, the complications of wounds and the ways to heal them often look the same around the world — no matter who you are or how you were hurt.
As the need for healing grows more urgent across the globe, he’s used a method that applies no matter one’s country, race or demographic: storytelling. This month, attendees in Cedar Rapids can experience a model that has helped others around the world.
If you go
What: The Rev. Michael Lapsley, recipient of the prestigious Niwano Peace Prize and author of “Redeeming the Past: My Journey from Freedom Fighter to Healer,” will lead conversations, lectures and interactive sessions on racial inequities, racial reconciliation and healing through storytelling at several Cedar Rapids visits:
Friday, April 12, from 1:15 to 4:15 p.m.: “Owning Our Stuff: Honest Conversations about Racial Inequities.” Lapsley will share his story, followed by a group discussion with hopes to build a foundation for racial reconciliation and healing through the sharing of stories. Facilitated by Leslie Wright, executive director of Prairiewoods. Located at Beems Auditorium in the Downtown Cedar Rapids Public Library, 450 Fifth Ave. SE.
Sunday, April 14, at 10 a.m.: Lapsley will serve as guest preacher at First Presbyterian Church, 310 Fifth St. SE, Cedar Rapids.
Monday, April 15, from 3:15 to 4:15 p.m.: After-school treats with Wellington Heights school children at First Congregational Church, 361 17th St. SE, Cedar Rapids.
Monday, April 15, at 7:30 p.m.: Public speech at Coe College’s Sinclair Auditorium, 1220 First Ave. NE, Cedar Rapids.
Sunday, April 21, at 10:15 a.m.: Lapsley will serve as guest preacher at Christ Episcopal Church, 220 40th St. NE, Cedar Rapids.
Sponsors: Sessions are sponsored by a consortium of local churches and institutions including: Coe College, Bethel AME Church, Christ Episcopal Church, First Congregational Church, First Lutheran Church, First Presbyterian Church, St. Paul’s United Methodist Church, Wellington Heights Community Church, Westminster Presbyterian Church and Stand in Unity.
The healing journey
When Lapsley’s Society of the Sacred Mission order sent him to South Africa in 1973, nothing could have prepared him for his life ahead.
“When I arrived in South Africa, I stopped being a human being and I became a white man,” the New Zealand native said, “because from the moment of my arrival, every aspect of my life was decided by the color of my skin.”
Violence in the country, deep into the institutionalized segregation that lasted from the 1940s to the 1990s, was escalating as the resistance movement with the African National Congress continued to grow. Lapsley, a chaplain to Black and white students on separate campuses, saw the effects of the oppression up close.
In 1976, a year when more than 1,000 school children were shot in the streets for protesting an inferior and oppressive education system, Lapsley was expelled from the country. In nearby Lesotho, he became a member of the African National Congress and served as their chaplain.
In 1992, he finally returned to South Africa as chaplain of The Trauma Centre for Victims of Violence and Torture, located in Capetown, which worked alongside the country’s new Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In a short time, they developed a methodology that had helped him heal, but also reflected the struggles of South Africa.
It was there that he became aware of the power of telling one’s story. In 1998, he formed the Institute for Healing of Memories.
Before long, the institute was invited to Rwanda, just a few years after its genocide of the Tutsi ethnic group. Later, Lapsley went to New York City, where many who were part of the American civil rights movement said it was the first opportunity they had to speak about their pain.
“We’re talking about not just South Africa, but a wounded humanity,” Lapsley told The Gazette. “Wherever in the world we are, people wound and are wounded by others.”
What healing means
What Lapsley recognized in his work was that while some South Africans needed clinical intervention, many did not as they went about living their normal lives. But with psychological, emotional and spiritual wounds far from healed, they all had stories, and they all needed a way to tell them.
A key ingredient in healing isn’t just knowing what happened, but having it acknowledged, and resisting the temptation to bury it, he said.
“It’s what enables us to become full participants, recover agency, and be part of building a different kind of world,” he explained. “As victims, we’re frozen, caught in a whirlpool of what has happened to us.”
Globally, Lapsley said childhood trauma and gender-based violence still exist on virtually every continent. Around the world, the people telling their stories look different, but their experience is much the same.
For the Sami Indigenous peoples of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia, the grievance lies in the general public’s ignorance of their oppression.
In the United States, it’s the lack of comprehension many have of the pain Black Americans have experienced.
“I did those things, killed under command of adults, but it wasn’t me who did it,” a former child soldier confessed in France.
“I have felt humiliated all my life,” an elderly woman in Haiti reflected during one session.
“I’ve never felt so important in my life as I did during this workshop,” an Inuit woman said in the Arctic Circle.
“I’ve waited 42 years to tell this story,” an American veteran said in another workshop.
Cedar Rapids resident Betsy Kutter, who met Lapsley during an Indianapolis visit two years ago, subsequently visited one of his workshops in South Africa.
“I got a whole new definition for the expression ‘white privilege,’ ” Kutter said. “We think Cedar Rapids is not special — it has racial issues like the entire country does. We hope this will open some people’s eyes who think we don’t have any problems here.”
Achieving healing
Putting trauma in the rearview mirror requires detoxifying feelings of anger and vengeance, Lapsley said.
By focusing on what people feel, the poison of what they think about the past is neutralized, breaking the chains that turn victims into victimizers across families, communities and nations.
“It’s about remembering what happened, and increasingly to be at peace with that,” he said. “Once I’m able to recognize those feelings are valid and justified, but that they’re destroying me, there’s the possibility of journeys toward healing.”
It can take decades, if not generations, to heal trauma. But with each workshop or session, Lapsley hopes to offer participants the first step on their journey.
Comments: Features reporter Elijah Decious can be reached at (319) 398-8340 or elijah.decious@thegazette.com.