When people go to a wounded place they care about for the Global Earth Exchange or simply as a practice of giving beauty where it’s needed, most of us set our sites on a natural area that’s been polluted, fracked, clearcut, or in some other way damaged.

But a place can also feel wounded if it’s been the site of a personal wound. For example, the corner of 38^th Street and Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis became a wounded place when George Floyd was murdered there by a police officer in 2020. One year, for the Global Earth Exchange, a woman made a bird for the space in the New York City skyline that the World Trade Towers formerly dominated.

Recently I heard a story from a woman who had recognized a wounded place and taken a simple but profound action to minister to it. “Laura” had been sexually assaulted in a bar near her home. For a long time she had avoided the place, finding it too painful to look at, let alone enter. Then she decided to change that.

First, she arranged a bouquet of flowers in a vase. Then, in the middle of the day, she walked over the the bar. When she entered, the place was nearly empty. The bartender was busy with something, the few customers paid no attention. Laura walked to the window, placed the flowers on the windowsill, turned, and left.

Such a simple action, one lasting less than a minute. Yet, at the same time, it was an action that had taken years of preparation. For Laura, it was a confrontation with a place that had accreted all the toxicity of her own pain. In confronting it and transforming it, she felt a healing begin to happen. She had, in a sense, settled the score, but with beauty rather than revenge.