What we are is what we will be

What we are is what we will be? What we will be is what we do now. This Buddhist concept referring to reincarnation has me contemplating just what "I" am. Two years ago I was called to be a healer in the Episcopal church. By that I mean one who is trained to "lay on hands".

This idea freaks a lot of people out. The image most often conjured up reveals a televangelists holding the afflicted forehead and shouting that the affliction be gone. Certainly, this image makes for great entertainment and I reckon that some actual healing has taken place in those settings, but it's not what I mean at all when I talk about being a healer.

A very gifted and holy woman named Dr. Ann Brower taught the sessions that brought me to the laying on of hands. I have worked with my hands all my life, counting money in banks in my early twenties, creating beautiful embroidery in my early teens, "design and creation of fabulous glass bead jewelry" for the past 16 years. I have looked at my hands for a great portion of my working life and I know that they are capable and loving hands. When Ann Brower appeared in my life, she was speaking at the church I then attended on the need for bringing the healing rite to all Episcopal churches. She was soon to have surgery on her knee and we did a group healing. I put my hands on her knee as we prayed. She told me afterward that I had a gift.

I didn't see her again for about four years, but when she entered my parish life two years ago, she called several of us to take her training and bring the healing rite to St. Paul's. So we did. And once a month or so, I stand at the rail during communion and lay my hands on the heads of those who come and I pray for their healing. But I don't pray for them, I pray with them, and I too am healed in the process. Prayer is such an act of healing. It isn't miracles we look for or seek, though such phenomena is perfectly normal and welcome in the realm of holy work, but more it is acceptance of our brokenness, our pain, our suffering and our ultimate redemption into grace that creates a loving act of healing.

A fellow parishioner sent me a message yesterday, saying that his service as Chalist is the most important work that he does, perhaps in the whole of his life. Offering this sacred cup in ritual practice on a regular basis is also an act of healing and it is astonishing how the ego simply disappears in the face of such a gorgeous offering. To hold a silver chalice to the lips of another, as they drink, in communion with every other Christian accepting the sacrament in that moment. It is kind of leaves you speechless.