Mutuality means learning to lean into [angels’] wisdom for us and seeing angels as partners in the journey of spiritual transformation. We allow them their full agency as they allow ours. Over time, as we begin to see patterns of support emerge in our days and feel their presence in our prayer moments, trust is fostered. We begin to trust our own experience and intuition that angels are real and available to us. And we trust the reality of them in our lives.
From this space of nurtured time and attention, of mutuality and trust, we learn to offer our vulnerability to the angels. We sense their deep care for us in moments of tenderness and uncertainty.
Christine Valters Paintner, The Love of Thousands (8)
I am in need of healing. Daily. Admitting to my vulnerability, standing naked in front of myself, I take time to thank my body that heals itself. Cuts scab over. Bruises disappear. Swellings go down.
And yet. This body is a repository of viruses that blight my best efforts to ‘pace’ myself and manage my condition through diet, sleep and creativity. I am so fortunate that literally hundreds of different people have prayed for my healing over the past fifty odd years. I wonder how I would be without those prayers, without the shepherding of angels through my darkest times? I hate to think.
It is important, though, to acknowledge how many wounds have been healed in this body of mine, perhaps most particularly the spiritual, emotional and psychiatric ones. Without going down the rabbit hole of navel-gazing, it is important for me to share a testimony that is full of brokenness and full of healing and full of mercy and grace.
Jean Vanier, founder of L’Arche communities, (where the physically and mentally ‘vulnerable’ live in communities with those of ‘able’ bodies and minds), when speaking of his friend Armando, said, “Because he is so broken, in some way we can allow him to reveal to us our brokenness without getting angry … He is so broken that I am allowed to look at my own brokenness without being ashamed.”
Mutuality heals. I am in need of healing. Daily. Are you?
For centuries, healers in Africa recommended a fruit called bitter kola for infections. In the 1990s, Nigerian scientists discovered that compounds of bitter kola may be effective against the Ebola virus, which causes a fatal disease characterized by severe bleeding. Ebola is a symbol of all the horrific diseases ahead of us, viruses that have mutated, epidemics that rise out of the jungle and the places we disturb. We have had no defense against the Ebola virus. Now, we may have the bitter kola.
On my walk with my friend, through a canyon in New Mexico, we stop before a ragged Emory oak, its gray-green leaves pointed, their edges sharp. All parts of all oaks have an antiseptic effect. Oak is the basic astringent, a wash for inflammations, a gargle for sore throats, a dressing for cuts.
All around me are plants that heal and connect to the human body. The yucca spiking above is a steroid. Mullein acts as a mild sedative. Mullein root increases the tone of the bladder. Juniper is used for cystitis, Yarrow clots blood.
My body is interwoven into the chemistry of juniper and yarrow. The tone of my bladder is related to mullein root.
How can we doubt our place in the natural world?
From every habitat, I hear a chorus of cures. In the American West, for menstrual cramps, I might take angelica, cornflower, cow parsnip, evening primrose, licorice, motherwort, pennyroyal, peony, poleo, raspberry, storksbill, or wormwood. For tonsillitis, I could try cachana, cranesbill, mallow, potentilla, red root, or sage. For a sunburn, I might turn to penstemon and prickly poppy. The juice of the prickly poppy was once used to treat a cloudy cornea. The poppy helps, as well, with inflammations of the prostate.
…We may need to be cured by flowers.
We may need to strip naked and let the petals fall on our shoulders, down our bellies, against our thighs. We may need to lie naked in fields of wildflowers. We may need to walk naked through beauty. We may need to walk naked through color. We may need to walk naked through scent. We may need to walk naked through sex and death. We may need to feel beauty on our skin. We may need to walk the pollen path, among the flowers that are everywhere.
Sharman Apt Russell, ‘Cured by Flowers’
earthfinds. (iPhone image)
image into ikon 