The Mystery of Healing

But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.

Isaiah 53:5 (NIV)

Bernini's The Ecstasy St. Teresa^*

In this season of Lent, we are confronted with the reality of death and the promise of healing.  How do we understand those realities?   Sometimes the answers are found in some unusual locations. 

In his epic novel, Cutting for Stone,  Abraham Verghese uses the vision of St. Teresa of Avila as a metaphor for the life and death of the Sister Mary Joseph Praise.  The story of maternal deaths is one that has occupied a large part of my professional life.   There are few harder questions than the causes and prevention of maternal death.  For me, the answer is summarized in the Latin phrase, “Mortui vivos docent” – “Let the dead teach the living”.   My focus has been on prevention and causes; but as Dr. Verghese implies there are important spiritual dimensions.  

St. Teresa of Avila’s impact is primarily related to her mystical visions and spiritual ecstasy.  We see this in the statue of Bernini that combines the apparent opposites of “piercing” with healing.  This is certainly a metaphor for the art of surgical healing; but what about death and healing?   Can we somehow see healing and death in the same story and statue?  Dr. Verghese makes that case in his novel!

I have previously seen this tragedy primarily from the perspective of the death of a mother and not as the reality of the orphans.   When in Africa, orphanages are a reality of lost generations of parents that have occupied the attention of religious organizations and NGOs.   The good news of  Dr. Verghese’s novel is the witness of foster parents.    So maybe the ecstasy that we can experience is found in that difficult but profound act of being a “parent”.   I think that is a lesson for the living!

“True religion is care for the widows and orphans”

“With God everything is possible”

*http://www.actlab.utexas.edu/~chelsea/pages/stTeresaVision.htm

Practitioner, Professor or Other?

The last and final word is this:
Fear God. Do what he tells you.
And that's it. Eventually God will bring everything that we do out into the open and judge it according to its hidden intent, whether it's good or evil.
                                                                   The Message Ecclesiastes 12: 13-14

But you are the ones chosen by God, chosen for the high calling of priestly work, chosen to be a holy people, God's instruments to do his work and speak out for him, to tell others of the night-and-day difference he made for you—from nothing to something, from rejected to accepted.
                                                                     The Message 1 Peter 2:9-10



I have read two recently published memoirs, Hannah’s Child and The Pastor. What is instructive for me is the movement between practicing and understanding the Christian faith. Both Stanley Hauerwas and Eugene Peterson have been prolific writers and Christian teachers. Their life journeys are mirrors of each other. Eugene Peterson moved from academy to pastor and most of his story is about being a pastor to a new congregation in Maryland. Stanley Hauerwas describes his life in the academies but finds fulfillment in the pastoral role. These stories should not be seen as vocational tension, but how practice and belief complement each other; how Christian living requires both and as a part of a larger story.

My medical vocation has been a strange dance of practitioner and professor. Just when I think, I have arrived at an identity; things change. It is as Peterson describes haphazard and at the same time intentional! What resonates with me and these two memoirs is the desire to be a witness to a larger story of God at work in the world.

For me the “patient congregation” is best appreciated when I have moved to new communities or countries. It means you wipe the slate clean. You bring what you have learned and taught into new and sometimes unusual locations. It means learning and teaching a new curriculum. When I have been with students you see the newness of the practice of medicine. The challenge is paying attention and realizing the limits of your professional preparation. Being with God’s people in these new places has been a blessing.

So for me these two memoirs challenge me to see that the vocation that we are called to is bigger than either practitioner or professor. That larger calling of the Christian journey is addressed by the “teacher” in Ecclesiastes. That final call is a clear challenge that is as much about outcomes as intent. It means that whatever our vocational titles all are subject to the duty to love God and keep his commandments and the bigger story of that royal priesthood in God’s Kingdom project.*

Marvin

*N.T. Wright, After you Believe: Why Christian Character Matters. HarperCollins, 2010

Mega-disasters

"Do you have any idea how powerful God is?

Have you ever heard of a teacher like him?

Has anyone ever had to tell him what to do,

or correct him, saying, 'You did that all wrong!'?

Remember, then, to praise his workmanship,

which is so often celebrated in song.

Everybody sees it;

nobody is too far away to see it.

"Take a long, hard look. See how great he is—infinite,

greater than anything you could ever imagine or figure out!

Job 36: 22-26 The Message

It has been overwhelming even for us who aren’t even directly affected by human or natural disasters ---people dying for causes and no specific reason. There are a lot of dead ends in our questions and responses to these human tragedies. We see the excitement of people searching for freedom as well as the brutal crushing military responses. We see our technical searches for energy sources become hazards to our global and personal health. We see the great forces of earthquakes and the limits of our preparations and response. Are these mega-disasters or is it just our ability to capture and share the reality with our new information technologies? At one level the individual loss of hope, life and future is a tragedy and a catastrophe. What also seems undeniable is the sheer volume of these tragedies... the definition of a mega-disaster where hope, life and the future is lost for whole countries in this world.

In 1952, J.B. Phillips published the book, “Your God is Too Small”. Despite that book, it appears our God, the God of Abraham and the Son of God, has continued to get smaller! The other observation has been that our counterfeit gods have gotten bigger. One response at this time of Lent is to re-examine, repent and redirect our understanding of who/what we commit our lives too. Maybe our denial of the reality of death means that we have not realized the sacredness of our lives. Maybe our hope has been misplaced on our technology. Maybe our faith has been focused on our idea of freedom when we need to rededicate our lives to service to those who suffer. Maybe we need to find humility and pray for forgiveness when we have come to believe that we are in control.

Like Job, I need to discover again how awesome is our God. That happens for me in the simple experiences of life where we see a God that continues to be present in lives of people of faith. They are a witness to a salvation that brings hope to whole nations of people who have been without hope. This is the mega-God response to mega-disasters. Praise be to God that is bigger than our mega-disasters.

Pilgrimage and Healing

 ¹ Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. ² Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda^[a] and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. ³ Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. ^{[4] [b] 5} One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. ⁶ When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”  
John 5: 1-6

There is great confusion between the concepts of healing and cure. Cure is analogous to the extraction of the trapped Chilean miners. We like cures, but what we know is that the Chilean miners continue to suffer even though they are alive. How will the trauma they have sustained be redeemed? Will it come from more attention? Will it come from a pilgrimage?

The turmoil in the Middle East is overshadowing the story of the Chilean miners, “Pilgrimage of Thanks”. Here are the reports in the media:
http://www.jpost.com/VideoArticles/Video/Article.aspx?id=209466
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/25/world/middleeast/25miners.html

What have we learned? We love cures but healing is a larger idea. Pilgrimage is a good description of the journey that at its core is a metaphor for healing. Healing takes time and we are impatient and look to a quick technical response.

But is pilgrimage more than a metaphor? Maybe artifacts of the historic faith that was a gift to the miners will give them new strength. Maybe a Jewish prayer shawl will bring healing. Maybe it will happen quietly in the broken spirits of these men. What we should pray for is that the faith that we saw in the lives of the miners will continue to be a witness of their continued pilgrimage of healing to a world in chaos.

p.s. See the prior post “An International Healing Parable” – October 31, 2I010

"Watson" vs. Dr. House

It started out as a typical encounter...reporting the results of the ultrasound to the patient and her husband. On finishing, the patient’s husband states, “You should have been on House!” Before I could respond, the patient said, “Ya, but he is nicer”. I was uncertain how to respond to what might have been a criticism or a complement.

That evening the CBS news reported on the utility of “Watson”, the intelligent computer that successfully defeated prior champions on the game show “Jeopardy”. As a part of that report we heard about the success of “Watson” as a diagnostician in clinical trials. We were reassured not to worry that physicians would not be replaced by intelligent computers.

The obvious conclusion is that we should expect a “House MD” show that will play out the defeat of “House” by “Watson”, the technology he loves. This looks like Greek mythology with larger than life characters and principles in a cosmic struggle. I must admit that I hope we will see “Watson” soon on “House MD”! It would be an interesting story.

The reassurance by physicians on the CBS news seems less reliable to me since although technology has provided wonderful improvements in care, it has been at a high price! Complaints about the impersonal nature of healthcare seem to be played out in the character of Dr. House with little mention of the costs even though it is a primary concern of health care resource allocation. Maybe most importantly, it seems to me that healthcare technology is one of those counterfeit gods that seduce all of us into believing we can control our lives.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7357134n

http://www.fox.com/house/

http://www.amazon.com/Counterfeit-Gods-Empty-Promises-Matters/dp/0525951369#_

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_44/b4153056904077.htm

Pupils/Patients – Teacher/Doctor

In 1995, I attended the AAMC (American Association of Medical Colleges) meeting where George Will was asked to comment on the public’s understanding of medical education. His response was simply “They don’t have an understanding!” That could be changing given two recent events!

There are two healing conversations that have recently occupied my attention. The first is the movie “The King’s Speech” and the second the play “Let Me Down Easy” by Anna Deveare Smith. Both are opportunities to examine the character of healing. In the movie we see a history of a royal British healing and the other we see the complex current state of healthcare in the United States. Both stories have been acclaimed at a time when serious conversations about healing are not popular.

It is hard to understand the popularity without a sense that in both these stories there is a concern about the roles we play in the interactions of two people in a modern world of anonymity. We usually talk about the patient/doctor relationship and less about the pupil/teacher one. What I think is the reality is that the best aspects of healing are found when we see the educational dynamic as the basis of healing in the patient/physician interaction.

The play is an educational conversation that started at the Yale School of Medicine to provide a view of medicine that is opaque to many physicians. “The King’s Speech” provides a view of healing that has more to do with teacher/pupil relationships. We see the pain in both the teacher and pupil as they live out a relationship that “healed a nation”. Both stories have a basis within a Christian history of the impact of the church as both a stimulus for educational and healthcare institutions. We still see that dynamic at work in Christian missions of education and healthcare in the developing world.

My hope is that both stories generate more serious healing conversations by virtue of their availability and visibility.

“Let Me Down Easy”

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/jan-june11/deaveresmith_02-07.html

http://video.pbs.org/video/1330271871/

“The King’s Speech”

http://www.kingsspeech.com/

http://www.christiancentury.org/article/2011-01/voice-lessons

Peace from Above

Yesterday (1/22/2011), I had the opportunity to visit two very special organizations. The first Kazuri (www.kazuri.com) and the other Amani ya juu (http://www.amaniafrica.org/) are both organizations that promote the status of women in some unique ways. Kazuri provides employment for women by making beads and Amani provides employment for women by sewing wonderful quilts that tell the story of reconciliation.

Here is what seems to be the basis of their success. First, they have big ideas but have pursued them in small ways. Thinking about helping marginalized women is a big idea but their responses have been small steps that have resulted in growing effective organizations. Second, they both have found art as a medium to communicate their mission to other women. There is truth in beauty and what they create is truly beautiful.

What was exciting to see at Amani was a new focus on the importance of children as “vehicles” of learning and passing this peace. These women have a joy, vision and approach to healing that we all should support!