“The Blessed Healing We Can Do for Each Other”

Homily for Healing Service
The Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger
First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans
Sunday, November, 9, 2008

I want to thank church president Cherie LeBlanc for coming up with the idea for this service, and for organizing the Day of Healing activities for after the service. After Gustav, Cherie thought that day for our mental health, a day for healing our minds and hearts and souls, was something that many of us need right now, and I agreed with her wholeheartedly. We all owe her a debt of gratitude for her efforts, especially for the beautiful design of the posters and the Order of Service. I’m also grateful for the contributions of Marie O’Neil to today’s activities; Marie moved here for essentially this purpose – to aid in the healing of the people of New Orleans. We are appreciative of her many contributions to the day. I also want to thank Amina Rae Horton, a former and returning member of the congregation, for adding the closing Dances of Universal Peace to the day’s activities. We are glad she is back “home” and look forward to her participation in church activities. Finally, I want to thank my colleague, the Rev. Kim Miner, who graciously stepped in to help with the healing ritual after Kathleen North was unable to be here due to an accident with her cat this morning.

In this service, we come together to help comfort and heal each other even though all of us are need in healing. It is a testament to the power of religious relationship and to the timeless truth that we can help heal ourselves by reaching out to help others.

I do think we need a day like this, and we’ll probably need more than one day like this. In this recovering church, in this wounded city, in this divided country, people are coping with enormous challenges and gigantic stressors. Some were caused or made worse by the aftermath of Katrina, some are health-related, some have to do with worry over the current economic situation, some are political. Some are combinations of some-of-the-above. Some of us have trouble sleeping, others have anger issues, some self-medicate with alcohol or drugs, others have problems in our most intimate relationships, some suffer acute episodes of depression, others feel disconnected or isolated. We are all in need of healing of one kind or another.

Healing is not the same as curing. The patients in Dr. Remen’s story (“Caring Made Visible” by Rachel Naomi Remen, MD) are healed of their sense of isolation, but not cured of cancer. We in New Orleans can be healed from stress and depression, but we’ll still have our damaged city and damaged church and damaged lives to deal with. You might say that curing is for the outside, and that healing is for the inside. But the healing that we can reach for within, and the healing that we can do for each other, makes us stronger to change what can be changed and better able to bear what must be borne.

In this Day of Healing, we will experience several different modes of healing. Marie will lead us in a meditation exercise of guided imagery. Together we will chant a special healing chant. We will listen to healing music by The Nevilles based in the New Orleans Voodoo tradition, an invocation to Papa Legba, an African spirit said to be the guardian of doorways and messenger to the other Voodoo loa, related to both St. Peter and the Archangel Gabriel in the Catholic tradition. After the service, we will share food and drink (always an important part of healing here in New Orleans!), and then learn some yoga, biofeedback techniques, muscle relaxation, and breath work. We will end the day with movement and dances of peace. Healing is found in all religious and spiritual and cultural traditions, and different paths to healing are utilized by modern medicine and science. We honor the diversity in our congregation by using different methods to access the power of healing.

In this service, we will also hold a healing ritual, adapted from one developed in the UU church of Cambridge, Massachusetts, by my colleague Thomas Mikelson, who led the healing ritual in this church building for the UUCF conference held here 10 years ago. The ritual includes a form of healing touch, used in many healthcare settings to restore a sense of well-being through a transfer of energy from one person to another.

In the ritual, Rev. Kim and I will make ourselves available for any person who wants some one-on-one time. We will deeply listen to whatever the person wants to share or whatever issue the person wants to focus on. A person may ask for prayer or good thoughts or positive energy, or may just want a time of companionship. We will NOT do counseling, but will offer prayers, if that is what is wanted, or just listen. We will also offer healing touch, in the form of hug, or hands on shoulders, or a palm to a forehead.

But the healing of the ritual is not just or not only what Rev. Kim and I will do with whoever comes forward while the music plays. The congregation plays an integral role in the healing. By being fully present and compassionately witnessing, by thinking good thoughts or making your own prayers or sending positive energy, you too are a part of the ritual, and united, we become a healing community, connected to one another by the streams of energy flowing around and through and from us.

Church cannot just be the place where there is a lot of work to do. There is a lot of work to do, but if that is all we are, few people will want to come for long. Church cannot be just the launching pad for our work for justice in the world; if that is what we are, we will rapidly burn out the activists among us. Our church must also be a place of comfort and healing, the one place we want to come to when we feel wounded and lost and alone, the place that gives us strength for whatever we have to face. Only then can we hope to get work done and to accomplish justice in the wider community.

Participate in the day’s events as you feel ready and comfortable. There are many different ways to heal, and we’re offering lots of alternatives. One thing they all have in common is that we are sharing them together, as a congregation. May we come together and be a healing community for each other; may our caring be visible and tangible. And may we always remember, as Hubert Humphrey once said, that the greatest healing therapy in the world is friendship and love.

Closing Prayer
May all those who came forward for healing find what they are seeking.
May all those who gave their compassionate witness also find healing.
May we come together to be a healing community for each other, so that we can then become an agent of healing for our city.
May we gain the courage and wisdom needed for that transformation to a healing ministry to happen.
May the Spirit of Life move in and through this congregation for the good of its members and friends and minister, so that we may act for the good of our hurting community.
So might this be! AMEN--- ASHE – SHALOM – SALAAM – NAMASTE – BLESSED BE!