Healing Forward
AUGUST 28, 2026
Trauma Doesn’t Have the Last Word.
Join us this October for a conversation with NYT Bestselling Author Cole Arthur Riley
Every generation inherits hardship.
We inherit the wounds of our families and communities. We encounter injustice, loss, displacement, violence, division, and uncertainty. Trauma, in its many forms, is part of the human story.
But it does not have to be the ending.
On Sunday, October 25, McCormick Theological Seminary's Trauma Healing Initiative introduces HEALING FORWARD, a public event exploring healing, resilience, faith, leadership, and the possibilities that emerge when healing is understood as a communal practice.
We are honored to welcome Cole Arthur Riley— acclaimed writer, poet, and New York Times bestselling author for an intimate keynote conversation inviting Chicago into one of the defining questions of our time: What becomes possible when healing is something we practice together
A CONVERSATION WITH COLE ARTHUR RILEY
Few contemporary writers have shaped conversations around spirituality, dignity, memory, and healing as profoundly as Cole Arthur Riley.
Author of the instant New York Times bestsellers This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us and Black Liturgies: Prayers, Poems, and Meditations for Staying Human, Riley writes from the conviction that healing begins when we honor the stories we carry—within our bodies, our families, and our communities.
Her work asks deeply human questions:
How can spirituality help us become more fully alive rather than disconnected from our bodies?
How do we honor, lament, and heal from the stories we inherit?
What does faithful hope look like amid violence, division, and uncertainty?
These are the very questions at the heart of HEALING FORWARD.
As creator of Black Liturgies and Curator for The Center for Dignity and Contemplation, Riley has inspired a global audience through prayers, poetry, and spiritual practices rooted in dignity, liberation, and the sacredness of embodied life. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and Guernica, offering a vision of faith that is deeply contemplative, courageously honest, and profoundly human.
Rather than offering easy answers, Riley invites readers—and now our community—into practices of remembrance, truth-telling, lament, and hope that make healing possible.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO HEAL FORWARD?
Conversations about trauma often begin with what has happened to us. HEALING FORWARD asks us to consider another question: What becomes possible from here?
Rather than focusing exclusively on trauma itself, the gathering will explore the forces that help individuals and communities move toward healing and flourishing—resilience, imagination, leadership, faith, repair, belonging, and our responsibility to one another.
At the heart of the event is an idea that challenges our tendency to think of healing as something individuals must accomplish on their own: What becomes possible when healing is treated not as an individual achievement, but as a communal practice? Because healing does not happen in isolation.
It can happen in relationships. In congregations and neighborhoods. In classrooms, organizations, and movements. It can emerge when communities create spaces where people are seen, stories are honored, harm can be acknowledged, and new possibilities can be imagined together.
A CIVIC CONVERSATION FOR CHICAGO
Designed as a civic conversation rather than a traditional keynote, HEALING FORWARD will bring audiences into an intimate dialogue with a nationally recognized leader, creating space for reflection on resilience, healing, leadership, and collective responsibility.
Whether you are a pastor, educator, healthcare professional, nonprofit leader, advocate, student, community organizer, or simply someone longing for a more humane future, this gathering offers space to reflect on how healing becomes both a personal and communal calling.
The event also reflects McCormick's broader mission. We believe theological education is not confined to the classroom. It prepares leaders to engage the realities shaping our communities and to help cultivate healing wherever they serve. Faith has something to say not only about suffering, but about repair.
Not only about surviving the world as it is, but participating in the creation of the world as it can become.
BUILDING A LARGER CONVERSATION AROUND HEALING
HEALING FORWARD will take place in conjunction with the 2026 Disrupting Trauma Conference, creating a bridge between a public conversation about healing and the deeper professional formation that will continue during the conference.
But HEALING FORWARD is more than an opening event.
It is envisioned as a gathering with a life and identity of its own—a space where McCormick can bring people together across disciplines, communities, and lived experiences to wrestle with some of the most important questions facing our shared life.
How do communities heal? What helps people move from survival toward flourishing? What roles can faith, leadership, imagination, and belonging play in repair? And how might healing become something we practice together?
On October 25, we begin that conversation with Cole Arthur Riley. Registration is free and open to the public.