“How does healing happen?” I asked my dad, a seasoned country doctor in general practice.
“It’s an inside job,” he said with a wink. “Medicine helps of course, but the body heals from its own resources. We honestly don’t know all that much about how the immune system works, or why healing happens better for some than others.”
Today we are hearing a lot about targeted therapies and immune boosters, but I think the basic mystery remains. Where does wellness come from? And when is a spiritual connection the missing ingredient.
Mark tells the story* of a woman who had been bleeding constantly for 12 years. Now spent and anemic, she’d seen many physicians, but nobody had been able to help. In fact, she had gotten worse. Although she was ritually unclean and thus alienated from her community, she somehow believed that she could be healed by touching Jesus’ robe. And when she did, she felt in her body that she was healed! She knew it without being told or tested.
What happened? How did she shift from giving others the power to cure to knowing what she needed to do? Did she simply get tired of being abused or ignored? Of trying things that didn’t work? Or was there something about Jesus that confirmed her trust in herself – in her own knowing? We have to draw on our own experience to answer those questions, because the story in Mark doesn’t include those details.
In an age of experts and analytical technology, how can we develop that kind of inner knowing? How can we listen and trust our bodies to know the truth and act on it, whether others approve or not? How do we know when to stop treatment, as well as when to start? Not only will we face these questions when illness or an accident occurs, but every decision about our use of time and energy and money hinges on knowing what is good and true, both for ourselves and for our community. Our body-knowing connects us to the fate of the earth and all living things. Down deep, we know that incarnation is happening all the time. And, as my father said, “It’s an inside job.”
- When have you been led astray by what you thought you knew?
- When have you decided to leave a system of experts and choose your inner authority?
- How do you practice trust in your inner guidance system?
*Mark 5: 25-35
-Marjory Zoet Bankson, Seekers Church
