Salve: A Return to Healing
At its best, spirituality is healing. Theology shores this up with the root of the word salvation coming from “salve”, which is “to heal.” Healthy spiritual practices heal. Perhaps healing should be the marker by which we reflect on what is working. Are we healing our spirits? Our bodies? Our families? Our communities?
In our most ancient texts, we see that healing was not divorced from spirituality. Joseph used his spiritual intuition to inform his leadership, and the people were healed from hunger. Moses led the people through the wilderness with the healing sustenance of manna and quail. Not only were their physical needs accounted for, but the wilderness journey healed their culture through the development of beauty and purpose.The prophets push us to see even farther, as they warn that to ignore the call to healing is to put the community at risk of harm.
The Gospels offer an abundance of healing stories. From the physical healings through community (Mark 2), to those that are healed through spit and mud (John 9), to the woman who reaches out to just touch the cloak of Jesus (Luke 8), to the man restored to mental balance after living among the tombs (Mark 5) — the gospel stories lead us to see that healing is often paired with the beginning of faith.
In order for theology to return to its ancient practice of healing, it must fully engage the body, and yet reluctance persists. The separation between science and theology has not served us well. Pastors are fluent in the language of the incarnation as idea, but they are slow to come to terms with the body itself. This not only atrophies our spiritual growth, it also can render deep harm in communities. To not take the specifics of biology seriously is to not really speak to fellow humans. If we make an effort to develop a working knowledge of our own biology, we can begin to see how word and flesh work synergistically.
I suspect that the healing arts were connected to ancient forms of spiritual practice, because healing is an intimate path. While there are treatments (medicines) that work for all bodies, we mustn’t confuse treatment with healing. Treatment is a form of healing, but healing opens a much larger umbrella. Healing offers a holistic approach that connects our bodies to meaning and purpose. Each of us has our own road to healing, our own unique composition of cells, our own histories, our own limitations — and all of these are part of our personal puzzle of healing.
My own healing path started in my childhood years, when my parents brought me to Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioners in San Francisco because of a life long auto immune disease. I believe this experience opened me to different healing modalities, and I am deeply grateful. I then traveled in and out of health, but during my childbearing years, I was brought to a grinding halt. After having three children, I developed Epstein-Barr (EBV), a virus that causes chronic fatigue and exhaustion. This was coupled with my children dealing with eczema and asthma. Again, I was faced with the harsh reality that finding the path to healing was not an option, it was essential. Back to the drawing board, I went.
Dietary adjustments can be excruciating, and I found that I had no choice but to travel down this road. After ten years of circling in and around various diets, I finally found a way to secure a happy gluten free family, with very limited dairy. While my path is not universal, it does speak to just how challenging it can be to wrestle down your own road to health. And food is only one part of our health, how we move our bodies is the other. All of this has led me to become a Registered Yoga Teacher and to begin the work of becoming a Nutrition Coach. These are not exclusive paths of healing, but they offer one way to connect the body to the mind to the spirit. To heal one part of the system begins the work of healing on all the others. Spirit should work synergistically with flesh. Healing should be interconnected, always.
As I launch Salve Health and Healing, my goal is to support both body and spirit. To support the health of our cells requires a multi-faceted approach — including thinking differently about health and healing. The first goal is to simply help people embrace this thought: my healing is essential for myself, and for the well being of the world. This alone, can be a game changer.
So, as we move through this public health crisis of 2020 and into 2021, how can we move through it into a deeper sense of self, a deeper sense of community, and a deeper commitment to healing? How can healing be _the thing_ that you commit to for 2021 and beyond? We are all invited to take this first step of charting our own map for healing. Where does your trail lead?
