Rev. David Brown - Panel Presentation           

Whenever we speak of spiritual needs we invariably list them, define them, and even rank them.  We speak of the great need to love and be loved, but is it greater than the need for meaning and purpose in our lives?  Or is the need to hope greater than the need to forgive and be forgiven?  Whereas 'religious' needs are concrete and easily defined (e.g. the need 'to go to church'), the spiritual dimension refuses to submit to some neat scheme of codification.  Because it surrounds and pervades our lives it is uncontainable.
  In my work as a chaplain at the Royal Marsden Hospital, a cancer treatment and research centre, I have found it helpful to remember that one primary spiritual need overarches and infuses all the others, however they are defined: the need for wholeness.
  Wholeness means being healed.  Words and phrases such as salvation, peace, shalom, being saved, being healed and even health, if not strictly synonymous, mean basically the same thing.  They mean wholeness.  This is our only need in life.  Unless we are insane, this is all we want, because to be whole is to be happy.  To be whole is to be healed, to be joyous.
  We are living in a time when there are more distinct therapies and healing modalities than ever before.  As Benjamin Shield and Richard Carlson emphasise (1)   '...by not getting lost in individual techniques, we can discover, or perhaps rediscover, what healing is really about'.
  One of my primary tasks at The Royal Marsden Hospital in general, and within our Marie Curie Rehabilitation Centre in particular, is to remind patients and staff what healing is not about: it is not necessarily about being cured, although it can, and often does, include being cured.  Curing is eradicating symptoms, whereas healing is inner wholeness and peace with self, family, friends and God, however perceived.  People may be incapable of being cured because an illness is terminal or chronic, but they can still be healed mentally, emotionally and spiritually.
  I believe that at the heart of healing lies what I can only call the 'spiritual dimension'.  But what is it?  For me, William Purcell,(2) a former organiser for BBC Religious Broadcasting and canon theologian of Coventry Cathedral, defines it better than anyone else when he writes:

        We know it at the depths of our being, in heart and mind and soul.  We know it as a force which gives colour and taste to experience, and which hints at a meaning for life.  We touch the edges of it often or, more accurately, are touched by it often...  We can experience [it] at times of joy and sorrow.  We can become aware of it in strivings within ourselves after higher things.  We can feel it whenever we are moved to a recognition of beauty in art, and nature, and music.  The fact is that beauty in any form...or, for that matter, in the kindness and love which people can sometimes show to each other, can all [let us experience it].

  From my point of view as a hospital chaplain, the message underlying healing is simple but radical; we are already whole in the eyes of the God who made us.  Healing, then, is the rediscovery of who we have always been; an act of remembrance of who we already are; expressions of God's love.  For the Buddha says,

References:
1. Healers on Healing, Los Angeles: Tarcher 1989.
2. Beyond Reasonable Doubt, Norwich: Canterbury Press 1991.
 

You may quote from or reproduce these editorial clips if you include the following credits and email contact:
Copyright © Daniel J. Benor, M.D. 1992 Reprinted with permission of the author P.O. Box 76 Bellmawr, NJ 08099 www.WholisticHealingResearch.com   DB@WholisticHealingResearch.com

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