Healing

 

During our church service, there is a time for people to come up to altar for a healing blessing.  The pews in our church are in the round so the altar is at the center.  People stream into the altar from all directions like rivers flowing into the ocean. The blessings and prayers are given with oil crossed onto the forehead and hands on the head.  The choir sings a melancholy and gentle song of prayer for the healing.  All are welcome for a blessing for themselves or for those they care for who are in need.

This part of the service breaks my heart wide open with compassion and humility. I can’t help but weep at people’s courage for integration, repair, stability, and hope itself.  Sacred healing is not about being cured from what plagues us but becoming whole in our woundedness and loving to what has been abandoned.  The ceremony helps me to see how we all carry these wounds of inner estrangement even if they usually remain hidden from view.  When I remember to see this, I have more of chance to act kindly and compassionately in the world.  

I experience my own longing to be whole welling up inside of my tender heart and grief for all the keeps me from the source of this wholeness, a deeper connection with the divine inner spirit. My ancestors often visit me during the ceremony.  I weep for the pain they endured living hard lives sometimes without love, care, or any encouragement.  The hard journeys they took across the oceans and country for a better life, the never quite fitting in, the oppressions inside of the patriarchal family structures.  I carry them to the altar through me and we are healed together.

The minsters tenderly place hands on heads, recite prayers and benedictions, cross oil on each forehead. And we sing for all that we have lost and are yet to loose, our wandering in the darkness, our becoming tender as the first light of dawn.