Our Healing

How beautiful on the mountains 

   are the feet of the messenger bringing good news,

Breaking the news that all's well, 

   proclaiming good times, announcing salvation, 

   telling Zion, "Your God reigns!"    

Isaiah 52:7 The Message

He came to Nazareth where he had been reared. As he always did on the Sabbath, he went to the meeting place. When he stood up to read, he was handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. 

Unrolling the scroll, he found the place where it was written, 

   God's Spirit is on me; 

      he's chosen me to preach the Message of good news to the poor, 

   Sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, 

   To set the burdened and battered free, to announce, "This is God's year to act!"

He rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the assistant, and sat down. 

Every eye in the place was on him, intent. 

Then he started in, 

"You've just heard Scripture make history. It came true just now in this place."

 All who were there, watching and listening, were surprised at how well he spoke. But they also said, "Isn't this Joseph's son, the one we've known since he was a youngster?"

He answered, "I suppose you're going to quote the proverb, 'Doctor, go heal yourself. Do here in your hometown what we heard you did in Capernaum.

                                                                   Luke 4:16-27 The Message

Most of the time our worlds get categorized into dichotomies...doctor/patient, teacher/student, nurse/patient, clergy/laity, us/them, etc.  These categories often carry with them a delusion of immunity and power.  The biblical story is that we are not immune and do not have the power.   Our healing is not distinct from those we serve.

We are vulnerable and sometimes we need to be at two different places at once...”providing care” and being “cared for”.   We know that sometimes we don’t have places to be “cared for” or we don’t  make use of the ones that are available.

One place to be “equipped” - to be a part of the suffering world - is the church.  It is a place where we can hear the “larger” stories of faith.  For Christians, the church has not only been a refuge but a community that believes that it has other responses to a suffering world.  The components can be prayer, meditation, singing, study and maybe even potluck suppers.   That is the wisdom for us as we read the visions of Isaiah and Jesus reading Isaiah in the “meeting place”.

There are many styles of response by churches*.  For some churches, “our healing” is part of its missional goal.   They focus on “equipping”  healing agents and sending them into a world of suffering.  This reality is named  “salvation” and for others “redeemed”, but what ever the word it is the basis of “Our Healing”. 


Marvin

*Dunlap, S. J. (2009). Caring Cultures: How Congregations Respond to the Sick. Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press.

Healing, HeLa and Heaven

"And that's not all. You will have complete and free access to God's kingdom, keys to open any and every door: no more barriers between heaven and earth, earth and heaven. A yes on earth is yes in heaven. A no on earth is no in heaven.”  Matthew 16:19 (The Message)

Rebecca Skloot, the author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks provides us with a long and wonderful story of healing that confronts the technology of cellular biology and the immortal  “HeLa” cell line.   This story identifies some surprising heros....an invisible patient, her family, a daughter who becomes a mother to the author and a researcher.

What I learned is that relationships and art are key ingredients to healing.  Chistoph Lengauer’s beautiful photo of the HeLa cells that previously have only been sources of pain; becomes a wonderful focus of communication and respect.   For scientists the art of the science maybe the best way to communicate when words and jargon only confuse and frustrate.  But art at its best must find meaning in the relationships with the communicants.  

By the art of storytelling, Rebecca Skloot, digs deep into the fractured relationships with a pilgrim’s persistence.   What is critical is that she is part of the healing story without diminishing the integrity of the others.   She becomes loved and through that love is able to hear and learn some remarkable truths.  

We are left with many unanswered questions at the end of this book.  I think the complicated questions of property and product will best be addressed by using the lessons previously learned.   We will need guidance and wisdom that may come from the patients and the community we serve; not just the voices of those who are the experts.

So what about the “heaven” part?...maybe that reality is when “the good” persists or as the title suggests is “immortal”.   We certainly know that when “the bad” persists it is “hell”.   So we can rejoice in the title, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” as a “the good” that persists, a little bit of heaven here on earth.   Thanks for the life of Henrietta Lacks and the good that persists in her ongoing contribution to healing.

Marvin


For more information:   http://www.RebeccaSkloot.com

Good Courage and Healing

Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the LORD.

(King James Version)

Be brave. Be strong. Don't give up.
Expect God to get here soon.

Psalm 31:24(The Message)

In a recent book,  The Heart and the Fist: The education of a Humanitarian, the making of a Navy SEAL,  Eric Greitens connects two virtues, courage and compassion.  He states, “Without courage compassion falters, and that without compassion, courage has no direction”.  The most impressive part of the book is how he lives his beliefs through the work of his organization, “The Mission Continues”.  He writes about his time in Rwanda and reflects on a machete wound scar of a young girl states, "the world requires of us-of every one of us-that we be both good and strong in order to love and protect.”

Another recent book Love Wins:  A Book About Heaven, Hell and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, Rob Bell argues that there is another understanding of evil and that God’s love and specifically Christ’s love wins when confronting evil and suffering.   He also describes being in Rwanda (p. 70) with its visual artifacts of evil and is able to state, “God has been looking for partners ...(who) centered their hopes in God...the God who gives new spirits and new hearts and new futures.“

What I think both views come to is the reality of healing!   Both would agree that “good does overcome evil” but the source and process to the healing is seemingly different.  Eric sees it in discipline and dedication of the men and women he has met and studied.  Rob Bell sees it as gift from God that once accepted allows us a new vision of the world.

I give thanks for the healing agents, Rob Bell and Eric Greitens, who remind us of the importance of courage and love both as virtues and verbs!  God is at work in the lives and leadership of these men.  Thanks be to God!

Marvin

Faithful Minds

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

          Romans 12:2(NIV)

He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.

          Luke 10:27(NIV) 

About a year ago, I read the book, Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality, by Barbara Bradley Hagerty.  What seems undeniable is that there are important neurologic markers of religious experience whatever your faith perspective.  What seems to be difficult is how this biology relates to the larger realities of our lives of faith.  More specifically, the studies look at individuals and not what happens between individuals.

Recently, I have had some challenging medical experiences.  What seems real to me is that the care and illness seems resonant with the larger stories of our Christian faith.   An “Easter Baby” is not resurrection, but it is a wonderful celebration of life in a world of death and suffering. 

This idea of spiritual resonance is not a new idea*.  It means that we see a new meaning in the facts of the care.  This is the narrative reality that we seek...how the facts fit together not just for the healing agent but how it can be understood by those who suffer.   It means that we need to be able to connect to those larger stories.   It means that we need to renew our minds and see that new reality.   It means that loving our neighbor is connecting with their stories as well as the larger redemptive story of faith, hope and love.

*A wonderful essay from Azusa Pacific University, “Love as Resonant Communication”, expands this theme of resonance.  Check it out. 

http://www.christianleadershipalliance.org/?resonantcom

Marvin

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.