Healing Hands and Mended Ankles – Walking with the Beloved

In my last post, I said very grand things about the transformative power of an intimate relationship with the Beloved. And I want to share three stories with you to demonstrate just how intimate and personal this relationship  is.

The first is the story of Kevin, my chiropractor. Kevin is a tremendous buddy of mine, and I love this man because he radiates sweetness and kindness and joy. He is a dyed-in-the-wool fundamentalist so we avoid fundamentalist theology. But we talk, when I’m on his board, about Jesus all the time.

And what has happened to me through my friendship with Kevin is that my easy condemnation of fundamentalism has turned into something much more poignant and much richer, because I truly see in Kevin someone who has this intimate relationship and someone whose healing powers—because he’s an extraordinary healer; the reason why I’m sitting here is because he’s been working on my back for a year and because, unlike any other liberal chiropractor or Buddhist chiropractor, he has real healing hands.

And one day I said to him, I said, “How did this healing power come to you?” And he said—he was shocked—he said, “Don’t ever say it’s me. Don’t ever think of me as a healer. What I do is I empty myself, whenever anybody comes into the room, and I say to my Beloved, ‘Heal through me.’”

You can indulge in all kinds of condemnations of fundamentalism, but the question I asked myself when he told me that was do I believe enough in my Beloved? Do I believe, as he believes, without any shadow of any doubt, that if he just turns up in this sacred relationship, what he needs to help and heal will be given him?

The second story that I want to share with you, to show how this relationship works in the core of ordinary life, comes from a meeting that I had over the winter when I was in South Africa. I was giving a retreat in South Africa in a remote place in the Natal, and I met a woman whom I can’t possibly describe to you. She is so ordinary and so extraordinary.

Her name is Sister Abigail. And Sister Abigail is a Protestant Christian, not an evangelical but very Christian, although madly in love with the Dalai Lama. In fact, she got a prize from the Dalai Lama for being one of the “Unsung Heroes” of the world, and she prayed before she went to San Francisco—she came to San Francisco to receive it—that she would have a moment with him. And she was in a room with two hundred people. The Dalai Lama came in, made a beeline for Sister Abigail, took her head in his hands and just radiated his love towards her.

Sister Abigail works with AIDS children, children who have lost their parents and who have been abandoned. And, as everybody who is doing great work in the world at the moment, she has no money. And she gets from one day to the other, powered by sheer faith in her Beloved.

And one day, about three months ago, Sister Abigail sprained her foot. She’s in her seventies—this was a big drama, because Sister Abigail does all the shopping, does all the ferrying of all the kids to school, does all the going and signing the papers to get the money. So she sat down in her armchair, she told me, and she looked up and she said, “Lord, two things.” Sister Abigail doesn’t mince around with Jesus. “Two things: First, you see the state of my foot? Please heal it. Second, if you’re not going to heal it, you do the shopping.” Jesus clearly chose the first option, because two days later she went back to the doctor’s and her foot was completely healed.

We have no idea, because we have been so divorced from a false Jesus, of the power and the healing and the radiance that comes from a naked, authentic relationship with this beloved of the Beloved. Claim it and you will see.

My third story is long, deep and heartfelt: the story of experiencing the presence of the Christ in my father’s passing. And I will share that in my next post.

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To register for the “Cosmic Christ and Youth: The Occupy Generation,” the Christ Path Seminar weekend taking place online and on-site in Burlingame, CA,  10/11-13, see http://www.christpathseminar.org/ai1ec_event/cosmic-christ-and-youth-the-occupy-generation/?instance_id=99

To order the complete 12-DVD set of recordings from the first Christ Path Seminar weekend, “Cosmic Christ and the New Humanity”– including Dr. Fox’s delivery of the Saturday afternoon lecture from which this post is clipped, see http://www.christpathseminar.org/participate-by-dvd/

Be sure to sign up on the Christ Path Seminar mailing list to receive word when the DVDs from the second weekend, “Cosmic Christ and the Historical Jesus,” are released!