Journal of Sacred Work

If only we would let ourselves be conquered,
as things are overcome by a great storm,
we would expand in space and need no names.
-Rilke
   A Radiology transporter reaches out to touch the arm of a patient in pain. "Is there anything I can do for you?" she asks. But the patient has already received something apparently remarkable. "The moment the transporter touched me I began to feel better," the patient said later.  A housekeeper hears a delirious old man calling out for his daughter. She puts down her mop, walks into the room, and holds his hand. Almost immediately, he calms down and falls off to sleep. A nurse strokes the back of a tiny baby and energy moves through her to him. In none of these cases were any drugs administered. What happened?…

   I don’t know, of course, exactly how healers do it. But here’s
what I think. All the great healers seem to have
accomplished something that looks magical. What has really occurred is
that they have determined how to get out of the way and let God’s love flow through them. When they are healing, they let go of ego.

   Jesus never claimed to heal anyone himself. One of his best known sayings was, "your
faith has made you whole." Since Jesus knew it was not his earthly
body that was generating healing power he knew it was some greater power moving though him, even extending out to his cloak.
   Moses did not contend that it was his power that accomplished
miracles. He gave all credit to God. Muslims would say the same of
Mohammed and Buddhists of the Buddha.
   What does this teach the rest of us? That we have the capacity to act as channels for love. That we can be pathways for healing and, sadly, we can also be valleys though which passes the toxic fluid of hate.
   There are many other choices between these two extremes. But the remarkable message is the power within each of us to be channels of love (or of some other life energy) and that our energy affects the energy of others.

The Dance   It appears that some sort of vibration flows between some caregivers and some patients. It becomes a sort of dance requiring something from each: Love from the caregiver – need, openness and belief from the patient.
   A similar phenomenon may occur with artists. Musicians often say things like, "I didn’t really write the song, it just came through me – as if from thin air." I have had this experience in my own music composing. Just as God is always present, music seems to simply be there waiting, as an apple on a tree, waiting to be picked. My role is to become open to receiving what is already there – and then to apply some human energy in writing down what I hear.
   On a historic scale, this explanation is often offered about the genius of Mozart. He always said that his vast output of masterpieces were things that "came to him." Not that he created them, but that they seemed to appear to in his ears. The same was true of Beethoven who continued composing long after he was totally deaf. He was hearing the music from deep within.
   The hardest thing for caregivers is to know how to move out of the way of the light so it can pass through them. We know that trust helps. We know that cultivating a garden of peacefulness within also helps. And we know that healers are typically people who have suffered themselves in such a way that they are able to feel the pain of others and help to heal it.

The Hard Work, The Letting Go.   The pathway to becoming a pathway of love seems to require first a pattern of hard and sustained effort followed by a letting go. The letting go is what Rilke is talking about in the stanza from his poem, "The Visionary."  First we fight, he suggests, and then we "let ourselves be conquered."
   The remaining question becomes, conquered by what? Many give way to hate. Others give way to indifference, boredom, or quick fixes. The great healers, whether famous or anonymous, give way to love, and let God’s light shine through them.

-Erie Chapman