Carl Hammerschlag relates a healing interaction he had with a very ill old Pueblo priest and clan chief, whom he was treating in the hospital:
Suddenly, there was this beautiful smile, and he asked me, "Where did you learn to heal?"
Although I assumed my academic credentials would mean little to the old man, I responded almost by rote, rattling off my medical education, internship and certification.
Again the beatific smile and another question: "Do you know how to dance?"
... I answered that, sure, I liked to dance; and I shuffled a little at his bedside. Santiago chuckled, got out of bed, and short of breath, began to show me his dance.
"You must be able to dance if you are to heal people," he said.
"And will you teach me your steps?" I asked, indulging the aging priest.
Santiago nodded. "Yes, I can teach you my steps, but you will have to hear your own music.”
~ from THE DANCING HEALERS by Carl A. Hammerschlag with thanks to Elaine Simard
The accumulated wisdom of centuries teaches us that God speaks to the human heart most intimately only in silence. Silence and an inner emptiness or receptivity are the strange conditions for all our relationships. Without the ability to be silent, to wait, to be receptive, all our attempts at communion become manipulative and possessive. We become frustrated because we want instant gratification. We want all of who we are to be revealed. We want to know the end of the story. We find it difficult to wait. Waiting in the stillness, is, perhaps, the hardest of all human activities. It is not only hard; it is dangerous. The act of self-emptying leaves us open to attack from other quarters ... Yet it is only in silence that who we really are begins to appear. In the end, we need not fear, for it is our own best self struggling within, longing to be free.
~ from LIVING IN THE SPIRIT by Rachel Hosmer & Alan Jones
The experience of solitude is necessary because only in solitude and silence is the living God revealed as the binding source of all that is. The veil is lifted, and we begin to see the wonderful possibilities of life together that surround and inhabit us. This means that, at our worst and darkest moments, we can affirm that we are God's handiwork, that God's image has marked us forever, that the most real thing about us is the Spirit who dwells in every human heart. We may be fundamentally and utterly nothing, we may be creatures marked for death, but we are peculiar beings whose very emptiness has been designed to be inhabited by nothing less than the living God. And it is in the living God that we meet one another. The life of prayer revolves around two poles: solitude and community. God is encountered in both places.
~ from LIVING IN THE SPIRIT by Rachel Hosmer and Alan Jones
