Event
THE HEALING SEASON
By The Author
In the weeks leading up to a long-scheduled hip replacement surgery, for Spring 2020, I decided to enter into a season of prayer.
I spoke to God, saying I was not overly concerned about the surgery, that I knew I had one of the most renowned joint replacement surgeons in New England, if not the country, to do the procedure.
But because of my belief in the miraculous (for everyone, Christian or not) – I also said: “Lord, it may be your will that I have this surgery. But let it also be Your will that I heal quickly, with or without surgery, and I’ll bear witness to that event in every way I can.”
I then composed, revised and polished a prayer, that I hoped would have in each of its elements, if not each word, a connection to Scripture, particularly to the 103rd Psalm with its healing virtues and power.
This is the prayer:
“Jesus in your Presence are Love and tender mercies, healings of my Spirit,
Mind and Body – which I claim this day at your gentle touch.
Thank you and praise you, Christ Jesus.”
That was all.
And almost immediately the power and sweet impact of this prayer made itself known whenever I repeated it aloud, or silently in my mind, for as much time as I devoted to it and hours after.
Before getting out of bed in the morning I would repeat the prayer aloud and at times inwardly – occasionally drifting off to sleep again in the process. Then upon re-awakening, sometimes resuming the practice.
In the next few days I put aside spans of hours to get more deeply into the prayer’s wonders, which bring a lightness, clearness and awe at one’s sense of Being. Afterwards little things, like watching small birds splashing away in my yard’s birdbath, took on a special quality of joy, with the leaves of a sun-lit rose bush shimmering nearby. Reading, even a newspaper, held a special presence of clarity.
THE DAY OF SURGERY
It was the Lord’s will that I have the surgery as scheduled and I did – and it went without complication, completed in an hour. Maybe not a record for a surgeon who had done thousands of these procedures, but close. Often, it's my firm belief, God works through doctors’ hands, as He did that morning, on a seventy-one year old who still loves to ski and, especially, teach and play tennis.
Two days after I could sometimes push my walker along with my index fingers. Three or four days later, the walker was a prop, which I went through the motions of using because the direction had been given to use it for a week. After that stretch of time, I switched to the recommended cane (a walking stick in my case), but even it became more of a prop than something strictly needed.
In eight days I was walking normally and I’ve continued saying this healing prayer – for friends with scheduled surgeries, or who have illnesses that doctors aren’t able to mend, and seem out of medicine’s reach; or as the focusing element in meditation.
AVAILABLE TO EVERYONE
It’s my sincere belief that the healing power of this prayer is available to everyone, that just its regular and devoted practice is needed for its potential to touch people’s lives. And I’m so happy, overjoyed, to share it openly. Sometimes people need hope, sometimes desperately we need it, and that is the point of its sharing here.
And it can be said for others too, regardless their belief or non-belief, for family members and friends, as in:
“Jesus, in your Presence are Love and tender mercies,
healings of ________________’s Spirit, Mind and Body;
which I claim for (him/her) this day at your gentle touch.
Thank you and praise you, Christ Jesus.”
This structuring follows the New Testament writings and encouragement that we should “… pray for one another” – and that there is … “no distance in prayer.” I realize with this assurance that objections may come from some Christian quarters for claiming miracles are available to ones who believe differently, but I stand by the words of 1Timothy 4:10 in its support – and by the first-person witness of a Buddhist friend’s Easter morning healing from final-stage cancer.
FOR CHRISTIANS – ‘POINTS OF CONTACT’
In some Christian ministries today, the importance of ‘Points of Contact’ are often stressed for the experiencing of miracles. And this is helpful because the touching or holding of an object, can act as a channel of healing energy (though not possessing any special power in itself), adding to the dynamic of believing, and in subsequent healings.
St. Peter’s shadow is reported to have had this quality; and the handkerchiefs that went from Paul’s person, and were held by or put on people who then experienced miraculous healings, are other examples.
So for Christians here and others who may feel this need but don’t have an object they regard as having any special potential or quality as a point of contact, the Lord put it on my heart to present the image below as an option – imagining the stone in the stream represents these three things:
It’s the improbable stone in David's sling as he stood before Goliath.
It’s the stone at Christ’s Tomb that the Angel pushed away.
It’s the Rock that was, and is still, the cornerstone of Life Eternal.
Then as you touch your fingers to it, speak the prayer, believing the stone can serve as channel for the healing energy in its words:
“Jesus in your Presence are Love and tender mercies, healings of
my Spirit,Mind and Body – which I claim this day at your gentle touch.
Thank you and praise you, Christ Jesus.”
Repeated seven times, mirroring the repetitive action the prophet Elisha told the general suffering from leprosy he must do to be healed of leprosy – by bathing seven times in the River Jordan, and brought about his healing – the repetition of the prayer as the stone is touched is a visible act of humility, which is the gateway to God's presence.
If nothing should happen on the first engagement, please don’t become discouraged, and just try again the following day, and the next… until with each attempt the power of Hope needed for the miraculous to occur poignantly emerges – in the material God uses to fashion all Miracles, Humility its conveyance in the childlike medium of Faith.
Then when healings take place, please share them with the world, it is the Season of the Beautiful Unfoldment we are in, and not one of fearful judgment.
“God Touches”
This from my play’s website at Godtouches.com, where this design is from:
In this exercise “… we’re seeing the stone that will be flung at life’s obstacles, whatever crippling things or illnesses these may be, and we’re holding it in our hand – ready to throw it at those ills and overcome them [releasing our faith]; and we’re standing at Christ’s Tomb with the Angel and together we’re pushing on the rock, pushing until it falls aside letting the Light of Life in us emerge; then, finally, with the Rock as cornerstone, we are building that sound edifice which will one day house the beauty of Christ Consciousness, when we are to become as He is, joint heirs with Him.”
To the Sea’s Edge
‘Greater things than these shall ye do, because I go unto my Father.’
“The lame walked, the blind received their sight, and greater things than these are we to do in His Name.” These things have not yet been seen on this Earth, but we are on the cusp of them is my belief, that they soon will happen far and wide – released from as many sources. That even now, like the Israelites before the Red Sea, something is about to take place in this world that will defy our comprehension, and be wonderful indeed.*
“We can be part of this coming love and move of the Spirit as we ask to be healed, and become healers in our turn, in whatever capacity that may be. But this must come from within, as from without we seek it with a child’s humility – that irresistible virtue the One who sees all, and is everywhere present, is bound to honor.
* If only one child, one man or woman, receives a healing through this prayer or the exercise above, has pain alleviated or is touched by the Holy Spirit, it will have been worth every syllable – and commend the audacity that is not at its center, but may fill its seen edges.
_____
Written and compiled in June of 2020 … to honor the Scripture:
“That is why we labor and strive, because we have put our hope in the living God,
who is the Savior of all people, and especially of those who believe.”
* * *
Postscripts:
In the tender and fanciful new Beatle’s-themed film, ‘Yesterday’, the imagined elderly Lennon character says to the protagonist late in the story – that one of the most important things to living a satisfying life is “not complicated, it’s to tell the truth to everyone, whenever you can.”
The truth in this healing season for me then, has been to write what is presented on this page, as what I knew I was being inspired to set down – and that its impulse, its genesis, wasn’t coming from me, but from Above. That’s what I believe to be true. And if it’s so, what does one have to lose, but enter into its invitation to possibly be made whole again, to feel younger and healthy again, or help others to that better place.
“Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen...” – this is the fashioning clay God uses to perform the miraculous.
______
ADOMINO
Two weeks after this page was completed, as I awoke with the troubling concern that it all just came from me, I had this experience: while sitting at the edge of the bed that morning with this persistent doubt, a word presented itself that I didn’t know, which I believed to be Latin – Adomino. When I went online to Google its meaning, the three words that presented its definition were, ‘By the master’.
The weight of doubt lifted in that moment, and has never returned.
GLORIA IN EXCELSIS DEO
