Healing Time - Part II

“Black Hole” - First Picture

“Can you fathom the mysteries of God?

    Can you probe the limits of the Almighty?

They are higher than the heavens above—what can you do?

    They are deeper than the depths below—what can you know?

Their measure is longer than the earth

    and wider than the sea.

                                                    Job 11: 7-9 (NIV)

I had the wonderful opportunity to visit two centenarians this past weekend.  Two women acquaintances, family and friend, in separate locations.  Both were sitting patiently in their rooms with remarkably similar joys and concerns.  It was a holy time.

They both have strong faiths that have sustained them and both shared a peaceful spirit.  They loved the mutual stories of shared time and place.  They had pleasure in the remembered love of their spouses.  They loved being remembered.  

The surprise was their confrontation with the mysteries of time.  They “pondered” the meaning and reality of unlimited time.  They looked forward and “wondered” about what lay beyond the mystery of their next transition.  They both were excited about what that could mean.

So the message of this weekend was a continuation of the grace and mystery of time.  We have been blessed and healed by the generous gift of time.  It is the context for all of the healing that has and will occur.

Thanks be to God, the author of Time that has blessed all our lives,

Marvin

Hage, M. L. (2019). Healing Time.

http://healingagents.blogspot.com/2019/07/healing-time.html

Lutz, O.  Teachable Moments. How Scientists Captured the First Image of a Black Hole

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/news/2019/4/19/how-scientists-captured-the-first-image-of-a-black-hole/

Healing - Ends and Means

Netflix Documentary Series

“In the final analysis, means and ends must cohere because the end is preexistent in the means, 

and, ultimately, destructive means cannot bring about constructive ends.” 

                                                                                                     Martin Luther King, Jr.

Blessed are those who find wisdom, those who gain understanding,

                                               Proverbs 3:13 (NIV)

There is a new Netflix series, “Diagnosis” that uses the power of social media to bring hope and healing.  It is a powerful documentary of healing using a new means of healing that complements the traditional.  It is a search for medical wisdom.

So what about the components of the search of this healing process?  An essential component is the relational nature of the process.  Healing happens in the context of others.  It does not exist as an end without the presence of others.  There is an integrity of the healing intent and the outcome.

Medically, we always try to identify the costs of the means as well as the intended outcome.   We will rescind treatments that are worse than the disease.  We make healing promises, it is the reason we take oaths.

Healing means and ends are part of our communal lives.  This is the basis of the trust that is essential in the relational nature of our quest for healing.  You will see these lived stories in the wonderful series “Diagnosis”.

Thanks,

Marvin

References:

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (2010). “The Trumpet of Conscience”, p.59, Beacon Press

Diagnosis, from the New York Times

https://www.netflix.com/title/80201543

Ranard, B. L., Ha, Y. P., Meisel, Z. F., Asch, D. A., Hill, S. S., Becker, L. B., … Merchant, R. M. (2014). Crowdsourcing--harnessing the masses to advance health and medicine, a systematic review. Journal of general internal medicine, 29(1), 187–203. doi:10.1007/s11606-013-2536-8

Hage, M. L. (2016). The Search for Healing.

http://healingagents.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-search-for-healing.html

Hage, M. L. (2017). Healing Covenant.

http://healingagents.blogspot.com/2017/08/healing-covenant.html

Imber, J. B. (2008). Trusting Doctors: The Decline of Moral Authority in American Medicine (1 ed.). Princeton University Press.