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Praise for Healing Marks

Healing Marks is truly inspirational, timely, insightful, and wise. Epperly shares his breadth and depth of knowledge in deft and accessible ways. He invites us to broaden our understanding and experience of spirituality by bringing together faith, health, body, mind, in ways that are relevant for everyday living as well as tackling the big questions of life. Through the lens of the Gospel of Mark, Epperly pushes beyond false divisions between mystical faith and rational thought and guides us into a greater knowledge, experience, and practice of hope, healing, and wholeness. This honest and challenging book engages hard questions rather than offering up disruptive theological platitudes or pathways of avoidance. Healing Marks is deep, profound, and useful. Individuals and groups will be rejuvenated by the experience.

Edwin David Aponte

Vice President for Academic Affairs

Dean of the Faculty and Professor Christianity and Culture

Christian Theological Seminary

“It has been said that theology begins where the pain is . . .” Hand in hand with the healing stories in the Gospel of Mark, Bruce Epperly begins where the pain is, and ushers us into the heart of the big questions surrounding illness and pain. Is the disease our fault? Is it God’s will? Are we powerless in our pain? What role does faith play? Most theologians who try to deal with these difficult questions leave only more questions. We need an adequate theology that can embrace our pain without feelings of guilt on the one hand, or feelings of powerlessness on the other. No theologian I know deals with the difficult questions of faith and illness with more clarity and insight than Bruce Epperly. The healing stories of Mark suddenly become our stories, bringing us into contact with a new way of understanding what healing really means, one which brings about both emotional well-being and spiritual liberation.

Dr. Epperly deftly challenges the Calvinistic notion of an all-controlling God--popularized today in the writings of Rick Warren--in favor of a relational God of love and creative transformation. He sees Jesus as one who desires our active participation in the healing process. “We are not all-powerful, nor can we create our own realities,” says Epperly, “but our decisions shape how we experience life and can lead to liberating hope and equanimity in the most challenging situations.” Epperly does not just “theologize” from the ivory tower; his own personal experience with his son’s cancer allows him an intimate look at pain from the inside. Epperly writes as one who understands; he also writes with a holistic view, offering us healing practices or “healing marks” to help unleash the healing power within. As a Reiki master teacher and one of the finest process theologians of his generation, he possesses the unique gift of uniting biblical text and theology with holistic healing practices, and doing so in an accessible, clear writing style. Healing Marks is an important book for those suffering illness, for pastors, and for all who love the stories of Jesus.

Patricia Adams Farmer

author of The Metaphor Maker and Embracing a Beautiful God

Without skirting hard questions and with extraordinary insight, Bruce Epperly shows how healing texts of scripture connect with the contexts and broken texts of ordinary people’s stories to create transforming spiritual experiences. Healing, he demonstrates, is multifaceted in the Gospels and now: Jesus’s touching dirt-poor sick folks and well-heeled tax collectors bids us to spiritual practices and social justice using scientific tools.

Kent Ira Groff

Denver, Colorado

Retreat leader, spiritual guide, and author of Honest to God Prayer and Clergy Table Talk