Today I turn to prayer for those who are essential to the healing process of individuals, as well as our public health leaders and workers and the global scientific world now at work on a Covid-19 vaccine. I decided to recognize these human healers on Sunday to make a point. All healing is spiritual healing. There is no need to divide the world of prayer and spiritual vision from the world of medicine and science. While medical science requires a certain kind of objectivity that allows for precision and measurement and holds us to the rigorous methods of science, the only barrier to realizing this discipline as a spiritual practice is in our consciousness, our ideas of division and categorization. Understanding this seems especially important during the Pandemic. We need sound medical treatment and we need faith in a larger spiritual reality.
Because Covid-19 is so contagious and the consequences potentially so serious, hospitalized and quarantined patients are not allowed one essential aspect of healing--the direct support of family and friends. The more we view this division between medical healing and spiritual healing the greater the distance seems between prayer process--now from a distance--and medical treatment without visitors, without the touch of someone close. This is not only true for the patient, but for the staff as well, many of whom leave their own faith at home, because it is extremely difficult to hold a spiritual awareness and at the same time, hold to the demands of precision and objectivity when under the extreme stress of overflowing hospitals, shortages of equipment and supplies, protocols for contamination and contagion, and the heartbreak of human suffering. I am not just writing about doctors and nurses and clinical staff, but also those who measure and dispense medications, maintain equipment, clean rooms, manage the scheduling, deal with the paper work...
So today we hold a vision of hospitals and their workers and of all those in clinic situations and the first responders, EMT's, fire fighters, police who give their life energy to health emergencies. Today, we hold them in prayer, with great care and respect. We ask and we accept their renewed strength. We offer our faith when theirs is not accessible to them. We give them our affirmation of life's resilience that includes each of these workers and their families-- their personal lives, as well as their work, remembering that to be humane, we must human. We need rest, we need "down town." The way now opens. We affirm community compassion and understanding of the weight of their responsibility. We offer it now, from our hearts. We ask and accept that the Highest Wisdom, Intelligence and Truth now guides their knowledge and their decisions. Every day and every night. And we enfold them in gratitude and assurance that they are indeed essential, and accordingly, God pours forth all that brings healing through their hands. And so it is. Amen. (Susan Nettleton).