Seeing the Hospital

I had three appointments in the hospital today. I arrived at 9:30am and left about 2pm. So I had plenty of time to observe, chat, and listen. I saw men and women in wheelchairs, people getting flu vaccinations, folks in waiting rooms, doctors in blue uniforms, servers in the canteen, clerks in the gift shop, baristas making lattes, and a host of individuals either limping, coughing, sneezing, shuffling papers, pushing carts, or doing something that was sickly or taking care of the sickly. It was a community—a hospital community, a community designed for the purpose of healing frail and ailing bodies.

This caused me to think about this broken world. I live in a world where people suffer. People are sick. People are fragile. No one escapes the inevitable illnesses that plague humankind. We have earaches and sore throats, coughs and sneezes, broken bones, loss of hearing and eyesight, diabetes, heart failure, and cancer. As a result, we have places of healing. These places are metaphors for a larger reality—a spiritual reality.

I am a spiritually broken person. No matter how much I want to be whole, perfect, complete, it comes back to brokenness of soul. Like Paul of the New Testament, I find that my ideas of becoming like Christ are thwarted by inner urges that undermine my good intentions. I want to do right, but I end up behaving in ways less than desirable. I sabotage myself. I need a place of spiritual healing and a healer.

The place of healing is an inner sanctuary. It is that place where the Divine One lives in me. That One is the Healer. I have within a sacred healing space where my soul is transformed by the One Who Knows How to Heal. But like those in the hospital, I must go to that place and submit myself to the healing process. And like any physical healing, there is a crisis point, a pain threshold that must be visited in the process. I must be willing to suffer through the sickness and do what is necessary for my soul to be well. I have to take what the Healer prescribes no matter how bad it might it taste in my spiritual mouth.

And so I do it for my own soul care.

Day twelve of the Thirty Days of Seeing