Stories That Can Heal Us

I recently listened to an interview with physician and author, Dr. Naomi Rachel, who recounted how her life was shaped and inspired growing up surrounded by doctors and one mystic. It was her grandfather, an orthodox rabbi and student of The Kabbalah   who she described as a "flaming mystic." When she was only four years old her grandfather told her this creation story, which he called the Birthday of the World. Here are her words in the retelling:

In the beginning there was only the holy darkness, the Ein Sof, the source of life. And then, in the course of history, at a moment in time, this world, the world of a thousand thousand things, emerged from the heart of the holy darkness as a great ray of light. And then, perhaps because this is a Jewish story, there was an accident, and the vessels containing the light of the world, the wholeness of the world, broke. And the wholeness of the world, the light of the world was scattered into a thousand thousand fragments of light, and they fell into all events and all people, where they remain deeply hidden until this very day.

Now, according to my grandfather, the whole human race is a response to this accident. We are here because we are born with the capacity to find the hidden light in all events and all people, to lift it up and make it visible once again and thereby to restore the innate wholeness of the world. It's a very important story for our times. And this task is called tikkun olam in Hebrew. It's the restoration of the world.

 

I was deeply touched by this story. Listening, I felt a lump rising in my throat, a tingle in my arms, telltale symptoms when a great truth penetrates my heart. I sense this is a story that can heal us all, no matter, our affliction or restriction. It speaks of our spiritual essence that Thomas Merton described as a hidden wholeness.

As minister, and student of life, I have witnessed the miraculous healing power of stories. Stories reveal the whole context, the implications and revelations of lives touched by circumstances, the telling of which reveal how we can be transformed by our challenges and difficulties, not merely laid low. Out of context, sans story, there are only the bleak facts of cancer, divorce, pink slips, and abandonments. But I've heard and been touched by stories in which such diseases of body, heart and spirit gave way to revelations of Being, sacred insights, and enlightened perspectives. I've seen people stricken by difficulty find their hidden wholeness and emerge with a deeper and truer sense of themselves and a renewed compelling  purpose for their lives. I've lived such stories myself.

How do you define healing? What would it look like to you? Is it the eradication of disease in the body, or a relationship that becomes your expectations? If you widened your lens of understanding of healing in a spiritual context what story might emerge? If you intended to find the "hidden light in all events and circumstances" how would the story change, or your measure of healing progress?

There are stories that can empower our lives, in which we make a profound difference right where we are, just as we are. The only barrier to our healing is our willingness to find our place in these stories, and adopt them as the context of our lives. We do not have to judge by appearances, and live in constant dis-ease. We can allow the grace of spiritual insight to reveal the grander story in which we discover and heal into our wholeness.