Healing Ends

 

Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming

Traditional German carol, pub.1599

Personal Photo December 13, 2020

Asking hard questions seems to characterize the advent season this year.

“Are we there yet?” Is a common memory from the backseats of family trips.  It painfully recurs in the prayers of advent and now within the tragic context of a pandemic.  We desperately look for times and events that signal an “end”!  The vaccine distribution is one answer to those prayers but the “end of the pandemic” is still remote for most of us.

 

There is another related advent question,  “Will we receive  the gift?”  This question now finds its parallel in the issue of vaccination acceptance.   The underlying issue to any acceptance is “trust” in others and and their work.  Even those on the “science side” of this question know about the uncertainty of results.  

So during this time of prolonged waiting and questioning in this world, I find again that healing is not an event.   It is not the “hard stop” of vaccination, but a process of living with uncertainty in all its forms.  It comes in small bits of understanding and acceptance.  It even comes in the midst of a winter of grieving.

At this time of advent may we all remember and receive the blessings that surprise us like a rose blooming in the middle of winter.

Marvin

References

Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming Carol

https://library.timelesstruths.org/music/Lo_How_a_Rose_Eer_Blooming/

Hage, M. L. (2012). Awaiting “Good News”.

http://healingagents.blogspot.co.ke/2012/12/awaiting-good-news.html

Hage, M. L. (2018). Living the Dream.

http://healingagents.blogspot.com/2018/12/living-dream.html

Reading Together

And if we learn from this moment to be better together, 

we won’t just endure this crisis. We will thrive. 

Vivek Murthy, March 2020

"Keep close. You can't understand most of the important things from a distance, Bryan. 

You have to get close."

Bryan Stevenson’s grandmother in “Just Mercy”

In the past, I read predominantly in the growing mountain of professional literature.  It required close attention to and knowledge of the material.   It was focused reading to bring the best and newest evidence to the pressing questions of diagnosis and prescription.  In my lifetime, this became facilitated by powerful computer searching tools and electronic media.

Now, my reading is frequently recommended by others and requires reading as a basis of the conversation that follows.  The communication is about the many ways the same story/information is understood and applied.  

Here is one example from my church community.  We began using the narrative lectionary that organizes how specific stories meet the larger narratives in the Bible.  This is a four year curriculum of directed faith community reading.  It has been a wonderful gift to see how the narrative connects to our individual lives and encourages all of us to struggle together.

An example was joining another community and reading “Just Mercy” together.  This was a broader group that we were able to have conversations around the many stories reported by Bryan Stevenson.  These reflective times allowed me to form relationships and learn together even at a distance.

Thanks for communities that practice reading together.

Marvin

References: 

Sharma, D.  Reading and Technology Reading And Technology In 2020: Why Writers Are Bypassing Bookstores To Find Fans And Community? 

http://www.businessworld.in/article/Reading-and-Technology-in-2020-Why-writers-are-bypassing-bookstores-to-find-fans-and-community-/07-10-2020-328864/

Murthy, V. H. (2020). Together : the healing power of human connection in a sometimes lonely world (First edition. ed.). New York, NY: Harper Wave, an imprint of HarperCollins.

Narrative Lectionary

https://www.workingpreacher.org/home-narrative-lectionary

Stevenson, B. (2014). Just mercy : a story of justice and redemption (First edition. ed.). New York: Spiegel & Grau.

Hage, M. L. (2018). Healing Together.

http://healingagents.blogspot.com/2018/01/

Hage, M. L. (2020). Our Healing.

http://healingagents.blogspot.com/2020/05/our-healing.html