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A WORD OF THANKSGIVING

This is a very personal book. It emerges from nearly thirty years of living with the healing stories of Jesus. I discovered these stories in a life-changing way as a young college professor, seeking to make sense of the growing interest in complementary and alternative medicine. My interest in personal and global healing increased during seventeen years as a chaplain and professor at Georgetown University School of Medicine, where I was among the first persons to teach courses on spirituality and medicine at a major medical school. Over the years, I have embraced Jesus’ healing ministry as a pastor, professor, reiki teacher, and spiritual guide. I have wrestled with the meaning of Jesus’ healing ministry and God’s role in healing and sickness the hard way as a pastor, friend, child, spouse, and parent – with fear and trembling in hospital rooms, hospices, gravesides, and healing services. I have heard testimonies about the power of God to cure illness, but I have also sat at the bedside of dying friends and congregants, who have done everything right, according to the principles of their faith traditions and philosophies – personal and intercessory prayers, positive thinking and affirmations, meditation and diet, complementary medical treatments, and visits to faith healers and energy workers – along with the best modern medicine has to offer in treatment and palliation.

Along the way, I have benefited from a variety of healing companions, from whom I’ve learned much about healing in shared healing ministry and creative dialogue, whether in person or print: Morton Kelsey, Susan Trout, John Harvey Gray, Mary Jane Pagan, Larry Dossey, and Dale Matthews. I am grateful for their insights and guidance in the areas of healing and wholeness.

I am grateful to my publisher Henry Neufeld and editor Jody Neufeld for their support and editorial assistance, respectively. I am thankful to Bob Cornwall, a faithful and insightful pastor, for introducing me to Energion Publications. I am thankful beyond words to two friends, both of whom have faced health challenges, Anna Rollins and Patricia Adams Farmer, whose reading of the text reminded me that the pathway to healing goes through the valley of the shadow and not around it!

My life has been enriched by two faith communities, concerned with healing and wholeness, Georgetown University Protestant Ministry and Disciples United Community Church (Lancaster, Pennsylvania), as well as several congregations and denominational groups with whom I have led retreats and taught classes. I am grateful for their generosity along with the insights of my students at Lancaster Theological Seminary and Wesley Theological Seminary.

My faith has been challenged and strengthened by loving relationships with friends and family facing serious and life-threatening illnesses with whom I’ve practiced healing prayer, reiki healing touch, and personal and communal laying on of hands. From them, I’ve learned that love is at the heart of healing. Through it all, I have grown in spirit, love, and insight with my partner in life, ministry, and parenting for over thirty years, Katherine Gould Epperly.

May everyone who reads this text be blessed with God’s healing touch in body, mind, spirit, and relationships. May we all discover God’s abundant life in every moment of living and dying, and experience God’s healing touch that transforms cells and souls, and enables us to experience healing even when a cure is no longer possible. As scripture proclaims, “nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Epiphany 2012