About 3 years ago I went in to this Rabbi for a blessing.
"He said why don't you bless your patients!"
I looked incredulously at him.
Are you kidding?
Me! Bless my patients!
What do you take me for!
Some clergyman!
And even if I do
They might think I'm giving them the "last rights" or that I
have some how given up on them or even having failed as
a physician! so instead am resorting to prayer instead of
medication!
But he persisted...
So, out of respect for him
I began to mutter words like "God Bless" at the end of
every session.
Those two words! At first embarrassed I kinda got used to
them after a while!
My gosh what a difference it made...
I had no illusions about myself - make no mistake
I remained a flawed human being
With no "sacred credentials" to presume such sanctity
As the power-to-bless...
All I was doing was following the advice of this Rabbi.
What is a blessing?
What does it mean to bless another
How can a blessing mean anything today, in the context of
technological and medical power, those incredible
advances we have made in medicine and the human
ability to cure disease?
How come we need to resort to age-old rituals and sacred
words in an age of such
advanced scientific medical advance?
To bless is to first and foremost to give
To give of one's inner self
From the depth of one's being
Beyond one's professional capability and medical or
diagnostic prowess.
To give from that place of vulnerability and woundedness
we all share
To give in a posture of humility
To lie side by side with the patient on his or her side of the
aisle
To relinquish the power invested in as a doctor
To become a healer and carry the burden of this suffering
in those words
Then it is to invoke
To surrender to the Higher Power that guides us all
To admit defeat in the presence of Him who givers life
To admit we can only do what we can do
To realize the limitations of our science and art and the
craft of medicine
To see the limits history and current research places on us
To admit we have only gone so far and no further
To surrender to our own limitations as human beings and
care-givers.
Then to it is to ask
Always asking for the gifts
Of life and light
Of healing and repair
Of the heart
The pure heart
To remove all resentment and fear
To bathe us both physician and patient
In the warmth of knowing and feeling the Presence
The gift of Providence
That all will be taken care of
That He is Present to this pain and suffering
That it has meaning after all.
Finally it is to bestow
The deeper connection
That I as healer am present in ways beyond the
prescription and the injection
The prodding and the poking
The examination and the words
The diagnosis and the categories
The X-Rays and MRI's
The mastery of the human body and pathology
The abilities and the lack
That I am present in my own woundedness and frailty
In my own humanity and mortality
For you the patient.
To connect in this deeper way
In the knowledge of my limitations
In the realization of my own pain
Reaching to yours.
And miracles?
Can these occur?
Are they real?
Can they be measured?
Can't everything just go away
Can't things go back to what they were before this crisis?
Can't we just make this a bad dream?
That never happened after all?
Maybe, just maybe
This terrible sickness is a gift
That shows you and I
In such a devastatingly real way
Just how miraculous our ordinary life was and is
What we took for granted all the while
As ordinary
Now seems so desirable and miraculous
The morning breeze
The deep blue sky above with white puffs of clouds
whispering by
The green, deeper-than-green lawn after a fresh rainfall
The flower that recently sprouted outside my window
The fresh scent of lilac or ivy unsuspectedly wafting by me
on a walk
The child giggling and cooing to its mother
The sounds of Glen Gould's Beethoven
The beauty of art and architecture
The magnificence of the largest body of fresh water
stretching to the horizon on a calm day, that incredible
Lake Michigan!
And the raging sea washing up on the rocks, such
awesome power.
The trickling sound of a brook as it cascades down a fall
The taste of goose pate as it first touches the palate in its
complexity of flavors
The deep red wine full of body and vigor sliding down so
creamily
The strength of good single malt with friends
The night sky full of myriads of stellar beings
Each looking down at me form such a distance they no
longer exist
The warm touch of my wife's hand unconsciously passing
over my face during the night
The feeling of that first hug when my darling children
return home
The feeling of safety when I am with my parents
The tear that wells up when a Pete Seeger song
accidentally crosses my consciousness (when flicking the
radio dial), surprising me from out of no-where!
The sense of holiness by the grave of the Saint in a godforesaken
hole in the Ukraine!
The sense of gratitude in waking up each morning alive
And that first conscious breath
That delicious sense of being
And knowing that I have been privileged to live yet another
day.
These are the miracles for me
The miracle of the ordinary-yet-not ordinary life
As I live it
The life I desire
The life I wish to return to
The life I took for granted for so long
For so many years
The life I now see as so precious
And so miraculous
I ask to be granted a little more time
To live that life
That is the miracle for me.
