Everyone a Healer

For those who don't know, we get exactly zero television stations where we live, and we don't have cable television, so radio is kind of my TV. Over the past few months, Speaking of Faith with Krista Tippett has become my favorite radio program. It bills itself as "public radio's conversation about religion, meaning, ethics, and ideas," and covers a delightfully huge range of topics within that conversation.

The most recent episode I heard was "Listening Generously: the Medicine of Rachel Naomi Remen." In this conversation, Krista Tippett explored the humanity and spirituality of medicine with physician and educator Rachel Naomi Remen, who also happens to be chronically ill herself. They spoke about the importance of listening, loss, and the difference between curing and healing.

From the link above, you can read a transcript of the show, listen to or download the audio of the show, or listen to an extended interview with Rachel Naomi Remen. Here are a few quotes from just one portion of the conversation that spoke to me:

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...

...And this is, of course, a collective task. It involves all people who have ever been born, all people presently alive, all people yet to be born. We are all healers of the world. And that story opens a sense of possibility. It's not about healing the world by making a huge difference. It's about healing the world that touches you, that's around you.

* The "accident" refers to a story from the Kabbalah in which the wholeness or light of the world was broken and the fragments scattered and hidden in all events and people.

I love Rachel Naomi Remen's emphasis on understanding the world through story. I love too, the idea that there is a bit of wholeness, a bit of light, a bit of God, if you will, everywhere, waiting to be discovered. Her conclusions from this story are the same as mine. We are all healers, but we don't have to fix everything, just explore and nurture those bits of light in us and around us, the ones we touch. To me, this is compassion: seeing the light (or wholeness or divine spark or image of God) in every person and situation and responding accordingly.