Small Healing

Buckthorn - Invasive Species

Meijer’s Garden and Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, Michigan

“The Covid-19 pandemic underscored how intricately interconnected and dependent on complex global systems we are and how full of vulnerabilities and inequalities those systems are.”

“Healing. Refugia are places to heal. We seek to create healing contexts for people and the earth. We recognize healing as redemptive work.”

Debra Reinstra

It makes a difference where you read!  Reading the book “Refugia Faith” in Western Michigan immediately connected me with the author Debra Rienstra.  The author is a professor of English at Calvin University who is a careful observer of our current plights.  She is particularly cognizant of the role of the Covid-19 pandemic and the precarity that has been introduced in our visions of the future.

In her book, she has managed to weave together an alternative vision of healing that looks for the small responses of each of us to address the BIG issues of our dilemmas.  There is no denial of our losses.  She describes a kind of resilience that has its roots in faith communities and an understanding of our connectedness to the “other” as found in the created world around us.  

For me, reading in a place that I have called “home” allowed me to see the “awe” in what I have frequently taken for granted or ignored.  

Thanks for the reminders of where healing is happening in the ordinary and small places of our lives no matter where you live!

Marvin

References

Rienstra, Debra. Refugia Faith (pages16, 227). Fortress Press. Kindle Edition

Hage, M. L. (2012). Kingdom Learning.

http://healingagents.blogspot.com/2012/02/kingdom-learning.html

Hage, M. L. (2013). Resistance/Resilience.

http://healingagents.blogspot.com/2013/08/resistanceresilience.html

Hage, M. L. (2017). Home.

http://healingagents.blogspot.com/2017/03/home.html

Hage, M. L. (2012). The Awe of Healing.

http://healingagents.blogspot.com/2012/01/awe-of-healing.html

Can AI be a Healing Agent?

A new tool for life advice?

I just finished the book “Life Worth Living”.  It reminded me of my experiences with the classes “The Search for Meaning” and “Exploring Medicine”.  It was fun to reminisce about that period of my life, but there is a new kind of response in development - Artificial Intelligence.

There is no question that technology has had a tremendous impact on healthcare with both its benefits and burdens.  What has been clear is that the benefits have frequently been exaggerated and the hazards minimized.  The AI technology is at another level particularly as it confronts the issue of “agency”.  

For now, my answer is “no” as to AI being a “healing agent”.  Information is not a healing agent and healing does not happen outside of a community.  Healing requires a context and connection that happens in trusted relationships.  

There maybe administrative benefits of the AI technology, but there remains BIG questions about our humanity and this new information technology in healthcare.

Marvin

References

Volf, M., Croasmun, M., & McAnnally-Linz, R. (2023). Life Worth Living. Penguin.

Naylor, T. H., Willimon, W. H., & Naylor, M. R. (1994). The Search for Meaning.

Goswami, R. (2023).  Google reportedly building A.I. that offers life advice

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/08/16/google-reportedly-building-ai-that-offers-life-advice.html

Clark P; Kim J; Aphinyanaphongs, Y.  Marketing and US Food and Drug Administration Clearance of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Enabled Software in and as Medical Devices: A Systematic Review. 

JAMA Network Open. 6(7):e2321792, 2023 07 03

Bremmer, i, Suleyman, M  (2023)  The AI Power Paradox Can States Learn to Govern Artificial Intelligence—Before It’s Too Late?

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/world/artificial-intelligence-power-paradox

Hage, M. L. (2016). Future Healing.

http://healingagents.blogspot.com/2016/09/future-healing.html

van der Laan, J. M.  (2016). Narratives of Technology (1st ed. 2016 ed.). Palgrave Macmillan.

Precarity

Lake Michigan Holland, Michigan, 

Personal Photo - 8/8/2023

“The angst of facing mortality has no remedy in probability.”

Paul Kalmanthi

“It seems, when we’re doing life correctly, 

Other children and adults begin to see hope in one another.”

Brad  Montague

The reality of this post pandemic year puts me into the category of “survivor”.  Currently, my health has been good since I have still been able to participate in most events around me.  The larger question is more than just participation; it is purpose.  What am I called to be in this overtime post pandemic period?  

The changes that we are living since the “end” of the Covid 19 pandemic are difficult to articulate.  There have been major changes in our living as well as our institutions.  The word that seems to best describe this time of deep uncertainty is “precarity”.  It is this disorientation  that requires a reassessment of plans that we once thought of as secure.  The “fog” of Covid is more than an individual symptom but a definition of what we are all feeling.

The answer for me is to continue learning, but in a different kind of classroom than schools, clinics and operating rooms.  It is in listening and reading together.  It is with what have been given to me as gifts - younger lives around me that are also searching for meaning and direction.  

Marvin

References

Kalanithi, Paul. When Breath Becomes Air (p. 134). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

Montague, Brad. Becoming Better Grownups (p. 107). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. . Becoming Better Grownups (p. 107). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

End of the Federal COVID-19 Public Health Emergency

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/your-health/end-of-phe.html#:~:text=What You Need to Know,share certain data will change.

Singh TK; Zidar DA; McCrae K; Highland KB; Englund K; Cameron SJ; Chung MK

A Post-Pandemic Enigma: The Cardiovascular Impact of Post-Acute Sequelae of SARS-CoV-2. Circulation Research. 132(10):1358-1373, 2023 05 12.

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

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

Hage, M. L. (2022). Healing Ministries.

http://healingagents.blogspot.com/2022/06/healing-ministries.html

Healing Myths

 

The Little Mermaid - Statue Copenhagen, Denmark

“It’s fiction! Fiction is the great lie that tells the truth about how the world lives!”  

From The Covenant of Water

Come and hear, all you who fear God;

    let me tell you what he has done for me.

Psalm 66:16 (NIV)

It was a strange coincidence after just finishing The Covenant of Water to be watching the newest release of The Little Mermaid with my grandchildren.  I remember thinking there seem to be similar themes working in both these stories.   Hidden behind both these stories is another older tale that is the basis of both these modern myths, “Ondine’s Curse”.   

Why do stories have such a powerful resonance over time?  Is it the missing element in our current Western medical care?  Does healing happen when we can tell the story?  

For me, the healing stories are the ones I have heard from patients and physicians that have always had a sense of “awe” and left me wanting to “hear more”.   This clinical curiosity is an important foundation of the creative aspect of the practice of medicine.  It begins by listening to the patient’s story.  It moves the specific story to connect with a larger cultural story of healing.  It was one of the joys of the practice of medicine.

Thanks be to God for old and new myths that bring us healing!

Marvin

References

The Little Mermaid, Disney

https://movies.disney.com/the-little-mermaid-2023

Verghese, A. (2023). The Covenant of Water (Oprah’s Book Club). Grove Press.

Demartini Z, Maranha Gatto LA, Koppe GL, Francisco AN, Guerios EE. Ondine's curse: myth meets reality. Sleep Med X. 2020 Jul 13;2:100012.

Zmijewski P; Lynch KA Jr; Lindeman B; Vetter TR

Narrative Medicine: Perioperative Opportunities and Applicable Health Services Research Methods.  Anesthesia & Analgesia. 134(3):564-572, 2022 03 01.

Packer, L., Why we need fairy tales

https://storynet.org/why-we-need-fairy-tales/

Hage, M. L. (2011). The Mystery of Healing.

http://healingagents.blogspot.com/2011/04/mystery-of-healing.html

Hage, M. L. (2015). Telling the Story

http://healingagents.blogspot.com/2015/01/telling-story.html

Healing Visions

“The Father of Microbiology”

Personal Photo, Burial Site of Antonie van Leeuwenhoek

Olde Kirk, Delft, Netherlands 

“To see the miraculous in the ordinary is a more precious gift than prophecy”

Quote from the book “The Covenant of Water” by Abraham Verghese

And afterward,
    I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
    your old men will dream dreams,
    your young men will see visions.

Joel 2:28 (NIV)

At this time of commencement for so many, there are the large questions of “what next?”.  This is a critical question for the healing professions.  We have had significant disruptions with the pandemic.  What have we learned?  Are the answers found in other disciplines?  Are there new visions?

Abraham Verghese felt the weight of the pandemic and finished his book, “The Covenant of Water.  It is a beautiful book that asks these hard questions.  Like his previous epic novel, there are haunting sculptures, that capture the tension in our lives of what separates us and what connects us. 

The reader is left to ponder these questions.  For me, the answers are found in the young, the new graduates, the new residents.  They will find new answers to the suffering in the world.  They will have new questions.  Some may find wisdom in the ancient responses.

Thanks for the promise of new healing visions.

Marvin

References

Verghese, Abraham. The Covenant of Water (Oprah's Book Club) (p. 258). Grove Atlantic. Kindle Edition. 

Hage, M. L. (2013). “Seeing the Elephant”.

http://healingagents.blogspot.com/2013/02/seeing-elephant.html

Hage, M. L. (2012). Rx Ubuntu.

http://healingagents.blogspot.com/2012/04/rx-ubuntu.html

Hage, M. L. (2020). M & M - “Who’s Presenting?”.

https://healingagents.blogspot.com/2020/03/m-m-whos-presenting.html?spref=fb&fbclid=IwAR2k95e9LN4lldPtQSH6XcxrP6zHa1k36bzFPyw8iDmZ2Uq_z7SMArn7pCw