Thank you again for all the kindness on my health post the other day. I was really touched and there is something so healing about being seen and loved in the midst of vulnerability. I’ve had more health struggles even in the days since I posted, so am grateful to be lifted up by your prayers and blessings.
We are starting our Love of Thousands companion retreat on Monday (a 14 week journey and deep dive through my book) so I was pondering the many ways I call upon the invisible ones and sacred presences for healing.
Certainly there is God the Great Healer and Jesus facilitated many healing journeys and feels especially near.
But I also call upon Mary, Untier of Knots who helps me ease the places that feel tight and tangled, especially when I get overwhelmed.
There is Archangel Raphael whose special gift is healing and who is said to have stirred the waters at the pool in Bethesda.
So many Saints offer the gift of healing, but Brigid and Hildegard are two special presences and companions for me. Both would have been intimately involved in working with herbs and healing medicine. I can also call on Hildegard to help open the way for viriditas – or the sacred greening power – to flow more freely through me.
The ancestors offer their healing gifts too. Certainly the ancient mothers and fathers, whose genetic code flows in my blood and bone, are present to me to help me remember who I am and whose I am.
My own mother, who passed across the veil over 20 years ago, and also had rheumatoid arthritis which ravaged her body – I have no doubt she holds me as a mother can in the healing light of the otherworld. Her sister, my aunt Nancy, is another ancestor who struggled with multiple illnesses as well and joins my mother in holding space for ease and grace to enter.
Each morning I do a prayer of encircling. Sometimes it is for healing and I invite these powerful beings to surround me. Sometimes it is for overwhelm or other needs and I might invite a different circle of protection and prayer.
Ultimately, the effect is feeling less alone in my struggles. It is absolutely essential to have humans and animals and other living beings who support and nurture us on this earthly realm (from friends to medical practitioners to spiritual directors and therapists of various kinds to forests and mountains we love) but how beautiful it is to know of this added dimension. By cultivating these connections I feel held in their loving embrace.
We will be exploring these various ways of being in intimate communion with the love of thousands and great cloud of witnesses in our online journey.
You are invited to join us if this calls to you. It begins so simply, by bringing our presence and attention to the veil and all those who dance beyond it, which is really just below the surface of this world here and now. See them reaching toward you, celebrating you, and showering you in love.
