‘How long are you willing to wait?’ asked Jim Pym during a course on healing and meditation at Claridge House, Quaker retreat center. For me the question sounds out, ‘How long am I willing to wait in hope, open to all possibility?’ The question calls upon patience and a trust in the Divine, the Spirit, the Light, the Universe. It is a question I hear when seeking healing for others and myself. And it is an opportunity to let go of assumptions, expectations, and experiences.
Alongside waiting, the recognition of ‘not knowing’ is essential in the healing journey, as Jim Pym explained at Claridge House. We do not know exactly how a healing will take place, exactly what outcome will result. We cannot be certain about what someone needs at one point in the healing journey. Yet the Divine, the Spirit, the Light, the Universe knows and is able to meet this need. Another configuration of the question sounds, ‘How long are you willing to wait in the not-knowing?’ Rather than taking our knowledge for granted, here is a promise to learn from what we don’t know.
So I strive to seek healing with an open heart, mind and soul, trusting that the Divine, the Spirit, the Light, the Universe knows what we need at the moment we need it. From this space of possibility and not knowing, I pray for a woman who inspires me. We met last year at a Quaker meeting where she told me a story about one of her children. The child was hospitalized with meningitis, and the doctors said there was nothing more they could do. The woman contacted someone from this Quaker meeting, and the meeting ‘held the child in the Light‘ (as Quakers say it). At half past the hour, the child awoke and called for Mom. It was half past the hour when the Meeting held the child in the Light. And doctors declared the child completely restored.
This year another group of doctors diagnosed the same woman as terminally ill with cancer. She again hopes for life despite conventional medicine’s declaration of eminent death. Last week she delivered a healthy preemie, and now she receives chemotherapy. Check out her blog; it’s a site of inspiration. Her situation reminds me of a dear friend diagnosed with terminal cancer when she was young and pregnant. This year my friend turned 50 and is a grandmother. What is clear in such a case is that death is certain absent hope. Hope doesn’t guarantee cure, but hope is essential to seek healing and the possibility of cure. Because hope is open to all possibility.
In close here is a poem that came during the June healing course with Jim Pym at Claridge House:
For any whose
heart is heavy,
mind is full,
body is pained,
spirit is weary,
may the Light lift.
