Healing & Prayer

The Phallacy of misplaced concreteness according to Alfred North Whitehead: "mistaking the abstract for the real."

People ask me for healing prayers.
"I want God to heal me"
"I want God to heal my mother"
"Please, Pastor, pray for healing."

Healing, of course, meaning different things to different people, I seek understanding first, but mostly want to tell them a story of a time when...

Week after week
in the midst of my most troubled circumstance
and greatest physical paralysis
you traveled over the bridge
took off your sweatshirt
crawled into bed with me
put your elbows around my ears
looked me deeply in the eyes
and began
...
touched me so swift, so sovereign
that i forgot my pain
reached inside so beautifully
that i remembered why giving up on life
was not an option
made love to me so mercifully
that hope rebirthed again and again.

That's the story I long to tell when they request prayers for healing. I want them to know about you and that thing you did to keep me alive. I want them to know they can do it too, "it" being the stuff of healing that happens when we offer ourselves fully into the receptive places of concrete need. Less prayer. More offering. You taught me that.