"Tender shepherd, tender shepherd..."

"Tender shepherd,
tender shepherd
watches over all her sheep.
One say your prayers,
and two close your eyes,
and three, safe and happily
fall asleep..."

I've always loved the lullaby "Tender Shepherd" from the 1954 musical version of J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan. It seems a fitting soundtrack for this post. 

My 2010 summer at the Adventure Unlimited Ranches is fast coming to a close, and what I have witnessed of God's love, guidance, protection, and care in the lives of campers, counselors, and staff, is staggering.  I stand in awe of His omnipotence and grace.

There are so many stories that are not mine to tell.  I pray that those whose lives have been transformed and healed will find ways to share what they have experienced...during peak climbs, along the river, through on mountain biking trails, and in cabins...with loved ones.  I will hold, what I have witnessed of their journeys, in my heart, in sacred confidence...forever.

This afternoon I was praying about how to say thank you to one of my "partners" in this adventure...the Christian Science nurse, who is also here to support healing in our camp community.  Being able to work shoulder-to-shoulder, and heart-to-heart, with such devoted spiritual caregivers, is a holy gift each summer.  This poem is a song of love to my friend Laura, and, in truth, to each of the nurses I have had the privilege of partnering with over many summers at camp...I love you...



she arrives
in a cloud of stardust,
a moonbeam,
a whisper of
peace,
peace,
always "peace"

her hands are
deft and
gentle...
strong and pure,
ready,
willing,
skilled,
kind...

but it is her
eyes,
her smile,
the touch of something
deeper than
a surgeon's
probe...
it is
a love
that reaches
to still
the aching of a broken heart,
calms persistent pain,
staunches sudden fear...

do not be
fooled, 
do not be
distracted by
the
bandages and
soft cloth she will use to wipe
away the dust and
tears,
they
are not the substance of
her work,
they
are only symbols of
her heart...
so focused on
"binding up the broken hearted"
and
rejoicing in
the baptism
"submergence in Spirit"

in her heart
a manger
becomes a temple,
and the basin of water
is transformed
into
a sacred
font
where all
are bathed,
washed clean,
in
the river of His
pleasures

She is Christ's
servant...
by His side in the
operation of
Truth's curative
care,
comfort's art,
Spirit's touch of regeneration,
Love's first aid...

her balm is laughter
and
she wraps you
in her unfailing
confidence
that
God is All....in all.

Joy rings
out
clear, precise,
laser-like
and
tears are dried in
the warmth of her
beholding,
by the
gentle
breeze of her
movements

a smoothed brow,
a closed wound,
a touch as
soft as the breath of
summer air,
as firm as the mountain
beneath our feet,

She trusts as a
child,
she sings like a lark,
her words are
soft as a butterfly's kiss....

she waits with cool fingers,
she companions with angels, 
she sits in the
sacred space of Mary
while her
Martha hands
care for all
children...
because
in doing so, she 
honors
the boy
who once
brought a message...
of 
"thy sins are forgiven,
rise and walk"

she is my friend,
we are partners,
I am blessed....


this has been one very special summer...thank you for sharing it with me...

rest well tonight....with Love,
Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

'Breath of Heaven"

"...Do you wonder
As you watch my face
If a wiser one, should have had my place
But I offer-all I am
For the mercy-of your plan
Help me be strong
Help me be
Help me...

Breath of Heaven
Hold me together
Be forever near me
Breath of Heaven..."
- Amy Grant

As we move into this Christmas season, it just seems so important to keep in mind what we are really celebrating,  and how relevant it is in our lives today.  To celebrate the birth of a baby in a manger, without an appreciation for  his mother's journey towards that manger...and where it would lead us all...would be heartbreaking to me. 

"Breath of Heaven," was written by Amy Grant, but the version sung by Sara Groves, tears me apart.  The clip in the first link is Amy's performance and the video sticks to the nativity story, but the second video, paired with Sara's extraordinary recording, although a bit rough and dramatic, underscores the human passion and pathos of the larger story.  Both are moving.  I love them each for different reasons.  I do think that Sara's vocals are as hauntingly beautiful in this context, as Barber's Adagio for Strings is in the context of the crucifixion...but that's another post.

I had been listening to these recordings before church tonight, and after the service, I was talking with a friend about our work as spiritual healers...care-givers, practitioners, nurses, hymn singers, writers, painters, and prophets...those who hope to bless the human family with "crumbs of comfort from Christ's table, be it with song, sermon, or science."  And I realized, that every day, in our own way, we live this story.  We are surprised by the humble privilege of this holy work.  We know that we never could have chosen this path for ourselves, but are gratitude-sent into a life of service to our Father-Mother God by a holy calling. 

I don't know one spiritual healer who thinks he, or she, is "all that." Not one that enters this work through the portal of pride, self-certainty, or ambition. It is a deep hunger to serve Him that sings through our hearts. And the lovely, humbling truth is, that we know, with all our being, that anyone, and everyone, can do this work.  The fullness of love required to see the Christ in another, is deeply rooted in every man, woman and child.  Devoting our lives to this work, we, like Mary and Joseph, sleep with angels who whisper a calling, and a promise, in the dark.  And upon awakening, we must be willing, every day, to open ourselves to the birth of something fresh, unexpected, and deeply moving within our hearts.  We are asked by our divine Employer to surrender the body of our lives to His purpose for us. 

Like that young couple, we walk through the desert of human hopes (usually our own), to find that there is little room for us in the busy-ness of a "world as cold as ice," a village that measures worth by the hierarchy of accomplishment, accumulation, and acclaim. We turn from its beckoning doorway and search out the silent welcome of a manger, and in its humble, simple, stillness something new, and healing, and transformative is born in us.  Angels hover and kings kneel before this babe of Christian healing.  And we are amazed that we are there...among wise men and shepherds...to witness the advent of His gift "on earth peace, good will to men," and the gospel message of, "The kingdom of heaven is within you."

This happens over and over again in the life of a spiritual healer...every spiritual healer.  Our work demands a manger...not a busy inn, a charming bed & breakfast, or a sophisticated hotel.  Our music is the simple song of angels...hymns, gospels, lullabies, rather than an exclusive black-tie performance.  Our companions are publicans and sinners.  Our highest vantage point is not found in looking out from a throne, a pedestal, or a penthouse...but the lonely summit of a cross.   We are most grounded and stable when we are on our knees...washing feet, praying, looking up into the eyes and hearts of our neighbors, not down at them.  We rest most peacefully surrounded by lambs and doves, straw and starlight.  We are manger dwellers.

On the final page of her autobiography, Retrospection and Introspection, at the end of the chapter, "Waymarks," poet, speaker, reformer, teacher, discoverer, founder of Christian Science, and most importantly, spiritual healer,  Mary Baker Eddy concludes,

"In this period and the forthcoming centuries, watered by dews of divine Science, this "tree of life" will blossom into greater freedom, and its leaves will be "for the healing of the nations."

                      Ask God to give thee skill
                          In comfort's art:
                    That thou may'st consecrated be
                          And set apart
                        Unto a life of sympathy. 
                    For heavy is the weight of ill
                          In every heart;
                      And comforters  are needed much
                        Of Christlike touch. 
                                                          — A. E. HAMILTON

This is how she chose to close the last chapter of her autobiography...with a call to fellow healers.  And many who have been immeasurably blessed, healed, and transformed by God's love, have gratefully answered that call.  I am honored to work among such humble servants of the Most High.  I love you, dear colleagues...I am amazed by your selflessness, moved by your example, touched by your compassion, and encouraged by your lives of self-surrender, availability, and grace. 

In your company I hear the song of angels and the lullabies of that mother-love in each of you, singing "low, sad, and sweet" as you lift up the Christ child in every man, woman and child...each moment, of every day and night...you are my heroes. 

I am honored to be manger-watching with you tonight....
Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

[photo credit:  Ashley Bay 2009]

"And immediately the fever left her..."

"...and immediately she was made straight,
and glorified God..."
- Luke

I have continued to think about the experience I shared in my post on Tuesday.  Our daughter was a toddler that September.  And although I had actively helped to raise my seven younger brothers and sisters well into my twenties, my role was rarely that of nurse.  My mom had always been the nurse, spiritual caregiver and liaison with Christian Science practitioners when any of the younger children were home from school or not well enough to take part in their regular activities.

This was really my first bedside experience as a mother with a child who was not well, and I had never felt less equipped.  She looked so small and helpless.   This seemed so different from the scores of children for whom I had been called upon to give treatment as a Christian Science practitioner.  It seemed so much easier to see the true spiritual status of children who were not “my parental responsibility”.  I had long since chalked that up to my clarity about what was true about God’s relationship to each of His ideas…child, mother, horse, home, job.  But these feelings of helplessness, in the midst of my child’s need for comfort and healing, seemed to seriously undermine my confidence.  Was my clarity about spiritual reality and its practical coincidence just based on some cold disconnect with the patient?  How was healing so consistently experienced with patients whom I didn’t have a mother-child relationship with, but when it came to my own daughter I was a basket case?

As I often did, I turned to the Bible for an answer.  The one that came was so powerful it almost tipped me over in my chair.  I was reading a number of accounts about healings that had been realized in Jesus’ presence.  Each of them included a wrap-up statement in which the patient was healed “immediately, and they "glorified the God of Israel.”  Hmm.  Being the obsessed wordsmith that I am, I headed to my dictionary and Strong’s Greek and Hebrew lexicon to mine yet another term that I thought I had full use of…the word “immediately”.  What I found changed my practice of spiritual healing…yet again.  It said, “without medium”. 

Without medium….whoa..

It dawned on me with more clarity than ever before that neither Jesus, nor his thought, was a medium for healing.  Jesus was only a witness to what God was always doing: expressing, conveying, asserting perfection.  Jesus’ witnessing brought focus, that of the patient and all those present,  back in line with what was always and is only going on, and he did it with such transparency that they left the experience completely free of his role in what had happened.  They glorified “the God of Israel”…not Jesus. 

This witnessing, this focus, became for me “my job, my career” and I promise, I will write next week on what I have learned about the connection between focus and distraction as well as Mary Baker Eddy’s use of the word “magic.”  But suffice it to say that I see my role as one who walks into a “room” and trains my focus on the “first faint morning beams” of perfection, goodness, love…the presence of God.  I imagine myself as standing there just staring at it, God’s goodness, with absolute absorbed interest (spiritually) and eventually everyone is looking in the direction that I am looking.  I don’t have to do or say a thing.  I am not changing a thing.  I am not creating a thing, a thought, an environment, a situation…just providing a focus.  I am just drawing attention to what is already true and truly going on at any, and every, given moment. 

If I do what I do transparently, I can then walk quietly out of the patient’s “room” and they will see the “full radiance of the risen day”…the fullness of God’s goodness, wholeness, complete perfection…and glorify Him…forgetting that I was ever there…except to bring a nice hot cup of tea.

"Many imagine that the phenomena of physical healing
in Christian Science
present only a phase of the action of the human mind,
which action in some unexplained way results in the cure of disease..."

"They regard the human mind as a healing agent,
whereas this mind is not a factor in
the Principle of Christian Science...."
- Mary Baker Eddy

This changed the way I thought about relationships with patients.  Did it make any difference if it was my child, someone’s family member, his friend, her mother,  a stranger?  No, it didn’t matter.  What mattered was that I remained always available…and truly willing to get up and walk out of my own reverie, walk  (when invited) into the room, take in that warm “cup of  tea”, focus on the (sometimes “faintly seen”) presence of good, let the rest of the room wonder what I was quietly looking at and let them look in that direction themselves, tiptoe out, and let them “glorify the God of Israel.”

So that day I started a journey towards understanding the immediacy of Jesus’ presence… on a hillside, in a temple, by the side of the road, or in a sickroom.  The journey continues…I’ll keep you posted on the waymarks.  I have some travelogue-ing to catch up on…stay posted…oh yes, our daughter woke up that day a happy little girl ready to play…but that too is another post.

Next week…my side trip into the world of focus, distraction, and some insights on “magic”! 

Kate