A Dangerous Healer: A Meditatio in Montpellier

Healing is a dangerous thing. Most of us might be quick to recognize it but doctors, therapist, and yes, even pastors, often perform tasks that can both help and harm. I was reminded of this reality in a discussion led by one of Marianne's friends, Serge Bernard. Serge is a social worker who works with a very particular community of those who are deaf-blind. These are individuals who experience both deafness and blindness simultaneously and therefore are confronted with a unique set of challenges and issues. As Serge speaks of this community, however, what becomes clear is that this group does not define itself as being handicapped. They do not understand their condition as one which needs to be healed. In fact, they not only communicate with one another regularly but also acquire a range of sensitivities and abilities that sound, well, almost like something from a comic book. They can tell if the lights are on because they feel the heat in the room from the bulbs. They can sense and discern different vibrations in the floor and what they signify. One man Serge knows could even tell that he had made a wrong turn in a car trip of 500 km. In other words, many of them do not experience or suffer from alienation, disability, or lack of personhood. At least no more than you or I experience even with two eyes and two ears that work. To put it another way, most of these people don't feel disabled or diminished. This fact, however, is placed in stark contrast to the position taken by most doctors who have argued that infants with such conditions should receive painful operations to correct their deafness without parental consent - even if this alienates the child from his or her parents. Even worse, other physicians have argued that such a condition should allow women an easy abortion because such an existence is simply too awful to contemplate. What comes through Serge's talk, however, is that the doctors describe this group in ways that appear to have no grounding in their own experience as human beings.

Serge's discussion has haunted me and reminded me of the myriad difficulties faced by those of us who care for people with difficult, complex, even chronic illnesses, challenges, diseases, that defy our best prayers, practices, and medicines. What follows are some rambling thoughts, maybe intellectual graffiti, that has crossed my mind as I consider Serge's talk and its implications for me as a pastor.

Healing is about restoring persons not fixing illnesses. Often when I am confronted with someone who is struggling I remind myself of this by simply repeating, "This is not a problem to solve but a person to love." The distinction may seem trivial but it is at the heart of God's mysterious transforming work. We can all to often forget that well people can feel great anguish and alienation while those who are sick or struggling can not only find peace but serve others and live fulfilling lives. I love the quote from Patch Adams, the doctor who made great strides in offering generous medical care for those who were impoverished or terminally ill, "You treat a disease, you win, you loose. You treat a person, I guarantee you, you'll win, no matter what the outcome."

When healing professionals focus on a problem and not the person, we can quickly lose sight as to what is ultimately important. We can become frustrated by our lack of results wrongly reversing our disappointment upon the very person who has come to us for help. I am often delighted by the person who first comes for help - willing to listen, share and dole out an ample amount of advice. The second time will find me much the same way - happy to help. By the fourth or fifth time, however, I can become disenchanted even angry with such individuals, secretly harboring the belief that he or she is unwilling, complaining, or even faking. Their difficulty becomes my failure and, like the doctors mentioned by Serge Bernard, I want them gone. This frustration is due to the fact that I focus on the supposed problem and fail to see the person before me. Serge and Patch Adams are right. The person is the one that deserves our focus and attention and it is with his or her personhood that true healing is ultimately found. This means that those who are sick or so called disable can be healed even while maintaining their original state. If healing is fundamentally about restoring one's life to love God and love others then we can approach the person with a range of care often missed by focusing solely upon the specific concern. This reality was made all the more clear to me in seminary when a student who was deaf wrote into the school newspaper thanking the many people who asked to pray for him but asking them to stop. He remarked that he didn't suffer from deafness but remained part of a community, a culture, a language that he was quite proud of and stated his firm conviction that one of the many languages spoken around the throne room of heaven in the book of Revelation would be sign language. In other words, he wished everyone to know that he was not sick, sad, alienated or diminished. He was - healed.

There are a lot of issues going on in this blog which simply can't be unpacked here but I certainly welcome your questions or comments. It has taken me a long time to publish this blog simply because I feel like I have not tied up all the ends that I should have. Nevertheless, for my own thinking, I have written a prayer that I intend to use in my own encounters with those who need healing which tries to acknowledge the multifaceted and complex reality that I have tried to lay out for you so far. Some of you may be asking, "If what you've written is true then why pray for healing at all?" Well, I would respond, we should always pray for healing - yes, even miraculous healing, but be mindful that such a miracle can come in ways we never expect because we are not praying that problems will be solved but that persons will find their lives made whole in God. Here is my prayer - feel free to offer helpful changes or criticisms:

Prayer for Those in Need of Healing:
To the God who is healer
we give thanks.
To the God who gave us
NAME OF THE ONE BEING PRAYED FOR
to care for we give thanks.
Out of your compassion
and through your church
we ask that you would
provide all that s/he need
to be whole in body, mind and spirit.
So that s/he can love you, her/his neighbor, and herself/himself.
We pray that your kingdom would come,
your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
And we pray for the courage and grace to see it
when it does.
Amen.

Which Saint Do You Follow? A Meditatio in Montpellier

One of the themes of our time here in Montpellier is the subject of travel - why do we travel? how do we travel? as well as different forms of travel - pilgrimage, crusade, grand tour, immigration, etc. One aspect of travel that relates directly to this region and Montpellier in particular is the pilgrimage of Santiago de Compostela - the pilgrimage to the tomb of Saint James. One of the many beginning points of this pilgrimage is Arles, France moving across the bottom of France, over the Pyrenees and into Spain. After Rome, this is Europe's most important pilgrimage site.

Pilgrimage is an interesting concept, though not one that remains terribly important to Protestants, particularly Americans. But the externalizing of the inward journey in which one travels in order to recognize one's identity as a stranger to this world and to strengthen one's identity as one who faithfully follows is certainly worth considering. Christians throughout time have understood Abraham as the first struggling pilgrim and the Epistle of Hebrews speaks of Abraham and others with the compelling remark in ch. 11:

And if indeed they had been mindful of that country from which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return. But now they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed of them, to be called their God; for he hath prepared for them a city.

To desire a "better country" is a daily choice and if you are like me, however, you wake up somedays and just want to return, go back, and forget all about this journey with God and the promised land. It is a journey of success and failure, of hope and hardship, of faithfulness and doubt. The spiritual life is always the pilgrim's choice.

This pilgrimage choice is also starkly offered on the route to Santiago de Compostela by two different images of Saint James that a pilgrim can encounter along the road in churches as altar pieces, sculptures, and paintings. One common image is Santiago Peregrino (St. James the Pilgrim) in which the saint holds a staff in one hand while the other opens toward the viewer as if he is offering it to hold, an invitation to walk together as companions in the spiritual life, toward a better country. There is another image of James, however, that is neither offering a hand in friendship nor inviting companionship on the way to Compostela, Santiago Matamoros (St. James the Killer of Moors). This image embodies the historical reality of tensions between Christianity and Islam and shows James astride a mighty steed, his right arm thrashing with a sword down upon a turbaned figure beneath the rearing hooves of his horse. Both images are part of the historical memory of the Christian faith in its pilgrimage on the earth. One wields the sword in conquest while the other, explained in a medieval sermon, is "armed and defended" by Jesus' command to love one's neighbor as one's self.

Of course, James's two conflicting images - killer and pilgrim-have nothing to do with the saint himself and everything to do with the Christians who followed the route toward his tomb. The images reflect their choices along the way to either love or hate, pray or fight, walk or chase. These images also offer us, I believe, an important question. In this journey of life, which path will we walk? Will we follow the example of James the Pilgrim or James the Killer? Will we follow the one who heard Jesus' call to love others, even one's enemies, or will we join with the one who succumbed to that impulse that we all share - to kill our enemies in order to save ourselves? As you consider your route, I offer you a prayer that pilgrims to Santiago pray for their journey.

Teach us, apostle and friend of the Lord,
the WAY which leads to him.
Open us, preacher of the Gospel,
to the TRUTH you learned from your Master’s lips.
Give us, witness of the faith,
the strength always to love the LIFE Christ gives.
We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Parlez-Vous Anglais? A Meditatio in Montpellier

Well, my family and I have just finished our first week in Montpellier - part of our larger pilgrimage lasting for 5 months as we lead a semester abroad program for Westmont College. As many of you know, my wife is a French national and I have only come to loving and learning about all things French, myself being a German historian, later in life. All that to say, my French is not very good. Being a PhD who gains a lot of his identity from words - their creativity, their beauty, their power, their eloquence, I have been reminded daily this week that to live in a culture where one does not speak or understand a language is a unique place of powerlessness - where one is totally "at the mercy of others." That last phrase is telling because it is not a phrase that we would relish or consider positive. To be at another's mercy is to be vulnerable, exposed, and defenseless. But once we push past this initial wave of fear we realize that it is a bit misplaced. We are always "at the mercy of others" and more often than not, I have been reminded, they are merciful. Furthermore, I realize that I often hide behind an illusion of self-sufficiency which obscures the fact that I rely upon others for a whole range of things - I can't change the oil in my car, grow my own food, medically care for my wife or my children, and I don't even know where the local dump for my trash is. But more than that, embracing my own powerlessness has allowed me to grow particularly aware that I live every day by God's mercies, which, the psalmist reminds me, are new every morning. So, what does this mean right now? Well, it means that the most important phrase that you should learn first in any language (spiritual included) is "thank you." Second, to be at the mercy of another is what salvation and our life with God is founded upon - at our most vulnerable, incapable, and powerless point - God was merciful to us in sending His Son. Finally, it means that being a Christian is not simply the recognition that one is to be merciful to others but to also be ever thankful and aware for the mercies that one receives from God and strangers. And who knows, maybe that smiling Frenchman named Jean Michel is an angel unaware. Just maybe, on the rue de l'Universitaire when you are lost and a bit afraid - at the mercy of others, he is the mercy of God.