On Healing
This week, Trace asked:
I want you to write a prayer for healing and wellness, for someone in need of help getting through and recovering from ailments. I want to have a good focus toward The Wanderers, toward the things in need of aid, and any other spirits you think may be helpful to reach out to.
Oddly enough this is a topic I’ve mulled over a lot in the last few months, with a few too many bouts of sickness than I’d prefer to have, and in the middle of that a workshop where I chose to focus on the Healer divinity of another tradition I follow. And honestly I find that before I write a healing prayer, I need to talk a little bit about how I understand the role of spirituality in healing.
“Spiritual healing” is a fraught concept. For me it conjures images of faith healers, or laying crystals for someone who really ought to be seeing a doctor, or attributing physical ills to someone’s failure to be spiritually “right.” Prayer for healing, or magic for healing, is something that in my head carries as risk of eschewing other forms of healing that might be important too.
And yet, when I’m feeling ill, I want help. Even after I’ve seen the doctor, and taken the meds, and done everything else I’m supposed to do, getting through the experience of illness or injury is a trial. And that’s when I find myself wanting to turn to my gods and spirits, in hopes that they can help it along, or at least make it easier for me.
Healing demands action, and healing demands acceptance. Healing is, one way or another, coming back into a balance, which requires some movement, and some knowing when not to move. Some of the best spiritual works of healing I’ve seen have come in helping to navigate that balance, so that’s the approach I find myself taking, in healing prayer:
Swimmer-Within, help me be healthy
Swimmer-Within, help me be whole.
You swim in all life,
You embody the balance of nature
You help things be how they ought to.
Bring your flow to the things in me that are ailing,
and help me guide them back toward how they need to be
Stay at my side as I struggle,
curl around me as I rest,
and nudge me toward which one is right when I’m unsure.
As you swim throughout the rivers of life that connect us all,
be with those who help me heal:
The Dancer-Between and those who guide me in confusing spaces
The Sculptor-of-Pieces and those who support me when I can’t support myself,
The Painter-in-Rust and those who help separate what I need from what I don’t,
and any others gathered around me who can help me on this path.
I thank all of them, and I thank you, knowing that you’re always with all of us, helping us flow toward completion.
Swimmer-Within, help me be healthy
Swimmer-Within, help me be whole.
Those first and last phrases, the requests for health and wholeness, are sometimes the only thing I can manage when I’m feeling sick, or simply overwhelmed, but I’ve come to rely on them, and find comfort in them, knowing that my gods and spirits are there involved with me, helping in their own way even when I have other ways. I hope those words can aid others as well.