When I use the word 'healing', by that I mean that every disease has a physical element that we're very good at handling, but there's always a sense of the violation. 'Why me?' 'Why is my leg broken on the ski trip and not anyone else's?' And I think that medicine has done a terrible job of addressing that spiritual violation.
Interpretation
Healing encompasses physical recovery but also addresses emotional and spiritual aspects of suffering.
Abraham Verghese highlights the dual nature of healing, emphasizing that while medical science excels at treating physical ailments, it often overlooks the deeper emotional and spiritual repercussions of illness and injury. He suggests that when individuals experience distressing health issues, such as a broken leg, they grapple not only with the physical pain but also with existential questions about their suffering, leading to a sense of violation that medicine fails to adequately address.
In practice
During a health seminar, I might quote this to emphasize the importance of addressing emotional health alongside physical health.
The flip side of suicide is that it leaves a lingering question in the minds of the people who survived. It's like a cancer that's metastasized. The suicide is the cancer and the metastasis is all these people saying, Why? Why? Why?
We're losing a ritual. We're losing a ritual that I believe is transformative, transcendent, and is at the heart of the patient-physician relationship.
I still find the best way to understand a hospitalized patient whose care I am taking over is not by staring at the computer screen but by going to see the patient; it's only at the bedside that I can figure out what is important.
It was all I had, all I've ever had, the only currency, the only proof that I was alive. Memory.
My VIP patients often regret so many things on their deathbeds. They regret the bitterness they'll leave in people's hearts. They realize the no money, no church service, no eulogy, no funeral procession no matter how elaborate, can remove the legacy of a mean spirit.
You are an instrument of God. Don't leave the instrument sitting in its case, my son. Play! Leave no part of your instrument unexplored. Why settle for 'Three Blind Mice' when you can can play the 'Gloria'? No, not Bach's 'Gloria.' Yours! Your 'Gloria' lives within you. The greatest sin is not finding it, ignoring what God made possible in you.
I was so fortunate to play my club cricket at Moseley Ashfield. We had loads of Asians, white players, black players. You grow up from that knowing it just doesn't matter what religion or culture people are into, everyone is different.
I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously.
I was the Jane Roe of Roe vs. Wade, but Jane Roe has been laid to rest.
History comes and history goes, but principles endure, and ensure future generations will defend liberty not as a gift from government but as a blessing from our Creator.
God seeks comrades and claims love,_x000D_ _x000D_ The devil seeks slaves and claims obedience.
I will be as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice.
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