October 7, 2007 - Holistic healing: A vision of shalom - Frank Alton

2 Timothy 1:1-7

This morning I begin a sermon series on healing as a way to prepare both Immanuel & myself to open a Center for healing here early next year. Healing has become a core theme for me over the past seven years; this project is close to my heart. I’ve been exposed to a variety of healing techniques. The people who’ve taught them to me have consistently connected them to healing the world. It’s no coincidence I’m introducing this on World Communion Sunday when we receive the Peacemaking Offering. Many healing practices the Center will offer come from other cultures in the world – something worth celebrating & connecting to on World Communion Sunday. I’m convinced the world will never know peace until it knows healing. Shalom involves more than the absence of conflict & healing involves more than curing disease.

Starting a healing center at Immanuel allows us to offer preventive and holistic healing to people in this community. With health care costs and human stress levels at crisis level in this country, ancient healing techniques offer affordable ways for people to care for their bodies, minds, souls and spirits. But beyond the economics of health that concern this community this project responds to a vision of Shalom, a way to integrate our lives around a vision of holistic health. A group of healing practitioners has been quietly gathering around this dream over the past year. Our hope is to formally launch the “Immanuel Center for Healing” early next year. It will not be something brand new. We have been putting many of the elements in place for years.

· 12 years ago we began including anointing and praying for healing during Sunday worship several times a year. This morning are beginning to add that practice to the Sundays that we celebrate Holy Communion during the All Together worship.
· 10 years ago our first parish nurse began offering health services to the community.
· 5 years ago the El Camino counseling center opened, serving the emotional & relational needs of the Spanish speaking population of the Immanuel community.
· In recent years we’ve begun to incorporate more ritual into our All Together worship & spiritual practices like the labyrinth into our life together. We have rediscovered the ancient truth that rituals help communities bring healing to their members.
· 2 years ago we began to offer Yoga classes, and this year added Tai Chi as practices that offer both physical and spiritual benefits.
· Last year several folks at Immanuel began to receive spiritual direction from trained spiritual directors here.
· This year we’ve offered “restoring body and soul” workshops that empower people to access healing capacities of their own bodies.
· Next year as we open the Center we will be launching an integrated approach to healing to help people participate in this variety of healing practices that are custom designed for their own needs. Acupuncture, meditation & other healing practices will be added.

What do we mean by holistic healing? Every time I invite you to participate in the healing services here at IPC, I refer to spiritual, physical, emotional and relational healing. That’s one way to describe it. The “Sh’ma Israel” that we sing every time the Hebrew Scriptures are read at Immanuel includes the well known verse: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, & with all your soul, and with all your might.” That suggests holistic healing might involve unblocking our heart, soul & strength in order to love God fully. If we add the 2nd commandment – that we love our neighbor as ourselves – then being fully human involves the need to unblock all the things that keep us from loving well.

I’ve learned so much about how body, mind and soul offer different yet inter-connected door ways through which healing energies enter our lives. I didn’t know that emotions actually dwell in certain parts of our bodies; or that they release chemicals into our bodies that affect our health. I didn’t know that the indwelling spirit is a form of measurable energy central to our health. On each of the next 3 Sundays we’ll explore one of those doorways: healing through the body, through the soul & through the spirit. The final sermon on All Saints will address healing our relationships with those who have died. Those continue to impact us.

2 Timothy isn’t a passage about healing; but it includes a number of elements of a healthy outlook on life. The author writes as “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, for the sake of the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus.” What is the promise of life? Often in the Bible it refers to the Spirit. The Spirit is not just a pre-scientific concept that only relates to the spiritual realm. The Spirit is the life force that enlivens every aspect of our lives – physical, emotional, relational and spiritual. God’s spirit is at work in us to awaken our own spirit, and at work in the world to awaken the spirit of life. There are elements that block the work of the spirit, and there are practices that help to break through the blockages. Our bodies contain what we need to heal us. The spirit brings life and healing by breaking through the blockages. Judy and I have been attending a series of workshops that are training us in a popular education approach to empower people to unleash the healing energies in our bodies. In popular education one doesn’t become an expert before teaching others; one starts right away. So we have already begun to teach these practices. Our next session is this coming Saturday at 4 PM. I encourage you to come to learn how you can unblock the healing capacity of your body.

A 2nd element of healing the author mentions is a clear conscience. I think that means one has a unified life, in which the different parts of ones life are in agreement with each other. The author saw himself as having achieved that. But it’s not as easy as it sounds, especially when we connect this with another phrase: “rekindle the gift of God that is within you.” Each of us is born with a gift to offer the world. As we grow up that unique gift is challenged from all sides. Healing requires that we become subjects of our lives & of our healing. As that happens we will begin to have more clarity about our gift. Maybe that’s why we lay hands on people both to ordain them for service and to heal them. We are wounded healers. “Each of us carries suffering. This suffering is personal. But where do we end and the rest of creation begins? Going into the wound, we see we wear a common skin and have a common wound. The wound is in us and through us; it is both a personal wound and a World Wound. It connects us to others and opens the eyes of compassion." (Joan Halifax, The Fruitful Darkness, p. 14)

I recently heard this put in terms of first agreements and second agreements. The first agreement is the unique gift from God. That agreement is non-negotiable to the core meaning of our lives. We have to discover it and find a way to live it out. But during our lives we acquire a series of second agreements –commitments to careers, jobs, families, marriages, communities, etc. Sometimes second agreements conflict with first agreements. The challenge of a unified life is to figure out how to bring them together. The challenge may be different for women & men, but it is present for everyone.

Last Friday Judy & I saw the movie, “Into the Wild,” the story of Christopher McCandless. Christopher’s commitment to his 1st agreement, combined with his rejection of what he saw as the hypocritical state of the world exemplified by his parents, let him to leave his family behind and travel into the wilds. It cost him his life; the story ends with the question unresolved as to whether he made the right choice. But in a world where people give up on their first agreements too easily, Christopher’s journey is inspiring & challenging.

The intergenerational connection is another essential element of healing. Timothy is presented as child of Eunice, child of Lois. Lamin Sanneh says that Timothy is not his own. He is united in his parents, scattered in the tribe and gathered under the covenant. His name is fed by blood, nurtured by human milk & inscribed in the soul. When Africans ask "Who are you?" they answers, "I am my mother’s and father’s child, of the lineage of so-and-so, of the house of X and Y, of the tribe of Z." The Western notion of personal independence and psychic autonomy distorts this truth and blocks our healing. We need to be reminded of the Christian perspective on names. Genesis speaks of the unnamed void as chaos, a profound psychological insight. Naming lies at the center of healing and wholeness. With it we remember, recollect, respond, act and celebrate. Without it we invoke the chaos of Genesis, the chaos of modern disenchantment where diseases are named and individuals unnamed in hospitals and clinics; offenders are deprived of their names in courts and jails; the namelessness in workplaces drives people to despair.

Of course we also inherit traumas and wounds from our ancestors - “the sins of parents affecting the generations.” Healing involves becoming aware of these and attending to their healing. When we ignore “traumatic affect & memory we don’t make it disappear; we just create a psychic abscess that infects the rest of the person and subsequent generations.” (Dr. Sandra Bloom, 1997) Healing requires that we address the “sins of the parents” within the person, as well as within the society.

Emotions are another central element in healing. “Recalling your tears I long to see you so that I may be filled with joy.” Tears, longing and joy show how much emotional connection there was between Paul and Timothy. Most of us need emotional healing, an expansion of our emotional vocabulary, & more open access to our emotions. Ritual is a powerful way to heal emotions. I’ve already mentioned the men’s retreat I attended in August in the Redwoods near Mendocino. The 100 men, including 30 young men, spent a lot of time preparing for & participating in rituals. One night we had a grief ritual. At the beginning the facilitator, who has worked with a lot of youth, shared a provocative thought about our culture. In most cultures part of the definition of elder has to do with being a person who has experienced death to a degree that provided wisdom and perspective. But in our culture many young people have witnessed more death than their elders – a consequence of failing to work on emotional healing.

As the next ninety minutes unfolded his description was validated over and over again. Young men from the barrios named brothers, cousins, best friends, uncles and companions who had been killed. Each one spent up to ten minutes naming the names and telling the stories briefly and expressing their grief. My eyes were not dry for even 1 minute. After all had spoken we went outside and cleansed our hands with salt and fire. Then we re-entered the hall and took a candle for each deceased person we wanted to honor. For the next hour we slowly made our way to a makeshift altar of stones the youth had made in the corner, chanting together the whole time. After everyone had laid their candles on the altar the facilitator said that it had been important to honor the ancestors in that way, but that we are called to move on & choose life. He invited us to celebrate life. We switched chants and formed a circle into which one after another moved to perform his unique dance. What those men and the ritual we shared taught me was that we need to acknowledge our losses in community and through ritual in order to recreate a society in which elders once again witness more death than youth.

The final element of healing is a spirit of power in contrast to cowardice. The courage to be ourselves is a huge part of our healing. Some people are able to access that courage earlier in their lives than others. Paul saw Timothy as one of those people & was encouraging him to continue choosing power over cowardice. The core experiences of psychological trauma are disempowerment and disconnection. Experts tell us that recovery is “based upon empowerment of the survivor & the creation of new connections.” (Judith Lewis Herman, 1992) The fundamental stages of recovery are establishing safety, reconstructing the trauma story, and restoring the connection between survivors and their community. The healing stories in the Gospel involving Jesus involve these same stages.

The world tends to think of healing in terms of physical health. Many of you think more broadly than that. I hope I’ve stimulated you to access that broader thinking more fully. Do you want to be healed? That is a question that life continues to ask us. I’m trying to answer in the affirmative more often.