A member of a first responder team
after an earthquake in Katmandu, Nepal
Look at the helpers
As I was preparing notes for this talk, one item stood out from what I had read about responding to emergencies and disasters: Look at the helpers. When things are chaotic and people are anxious and distraught, it is stabilizing to look to the persons who are organized, trained, and there to help others act effectively.
I thought: why don’t we join the helpers? On a quick trip to the grocery store, I walked in and had a completely new experience. I wasn’t just wandering around, absorbed in my own needs. I was powerfully connecting with the persons and the situation in the store.
Watch the 14:48 video or listen to the audio file.
Integrated living
Notice how health is woven in with other dimensions of excellent living.
“Health, sanity, and happiness are integrations of truth, beauty, and goodness as they are blended in human experience. Such levels of efficient living come about through the unification of energy systems, idea systems, and spirit systems.” (2:7.11/43.4)
Now see these dimensions coordinated in the functions of cosmic mind.
“Matter-energy is recognized by the mathematical logic of the senses; mind-reason intuitively knows its moral duty; spirit-faith (worship) is the religion of the reality of spiritual experience. [When] these three . . . factors . . . become unified, they produce a strong character consisting in the correlation of a factual science, a moral philosophy, and a genuine religious experience.” (16:6.10/192.6)
On the way to the grocery store, I experienced that unification: what a way to focus driving, with all these factors integrated! Now see the integration even in the Spirit of Truth.
“The joy of this outpoured spirit, when it is consciously experienced in human life, is a tonic for health, a stimulus for mind, and an unfailing energy for the soul.” (194:3.19/2065.7)
Jesus’ charge to the apostles
“I send you forth to proclaim liberty to the spiritual captives, joy to those in the bondage of fear, and to heal the sick in accordance with the will of my Father in heaven.” (140:3.2 (1570.3)
How Jesus did ordinary healing
“Elman, the Syrian physician, with the assistance of a corps of twenty-five young women and twelve men, . . . treated the sick in accordance with all known material methods as well as by the spiritual practices of prayer and faith encouragement. . . . Many of the cures effected by Jesus in connection with his ministry in behalf of Elman’s patients did, indeed, appear to resemble the working of miracles, but . . . they were only just such transformations of mind and spirit as may occur in the experience of expectant and faith-dominated persons who are under the immediate and inspirational influence of a strong, positive, and beneficent personality whose ministry banishes fear and destroys anxiety.” (148:2.1-2/1658.4-5)
This is our goal, the kind of personality we are becoming, the way we are when we are at our best, as we grow toward continuous communion and increasingly fruitful ministry.
Prayer and faith
These paragraphs are carefully written . . . and self-explanatory.
“Prayer, unless in liaison with the will and actions of the personal spiritual forces and material supervisors of a realm, can have no direct effect upon one’s physical environment. While there is a very definite limit to the province of the petitions of prayer, such limits do not equally apply to the faith of those who pray. . . . Prayer is not a technique for curing real and organic diseases, but it has contributed enormously to the enjoyment of abundant health and to the cure of numerous mental, emotional, and nervous ailments. And even in actual bacterial disease, prayer has many times added to the efficacy of other remedial procedures. Prayer has turned many an irritable and complaining invalid into a paragon of patience and made him an inspiration to all other human sufferers.
(91:6.1/999.4)
What the apostles discovered
[On their visits to Jericho] “the apostles began more specifically to carry out Jesus’ instructions to minister to the sick; they visited every house in the city and sought to comfort every afflicted person. . . . They now made the discovery that the good news of the kingdom was very comforting to the sick; that their message carried healing for the afflicted.” 141:8.1-2/1595.2-3)
Many of the persons to whom the twelve were ministering were followers of John the Baptist, who were especially receptive to the more advanced teachings of Jesus and the twelve. Think you wonderful it would be to receive the assurance that you are a son or daughter of God, divinely created, infinitely loved, with the spirit of God dwelling within you.
How the gospel works
“As to my message and the teaching of my disciples, you should judge them by their fruits. If we proclaim to you the truths of the spirit, the spirit will witness in your hearts that our message is genuine.” (142:5.2/1601.2)
If the gospel messenger is experiencing the realization of the truths s/he is teaching, then the truth can enter into the whole personality of the receptive hearer. The fruit is that the spirit of God within will ratify the truth of what you are hearing. That what had been happening with in Jericho.
High-power healing
Here is an excerpt from the critique Jesus gave to explain the failure of the apostles to cast out the rebellious midwayer from the son of James of Safed. We can view this as positively, as a list of what we need to do the work. The human mind by itself, cannot do it. But God can do it with us, provided the following three conditions are satisfied. “You cannot time-shorten the course of established natural phenomena except when such things are in accordance with the Father’s will. Nor can you do spiritual work in the absence of spiritual power. And you can do neither of these, even when their potential is present, without the existence of that third and essential human factor, the personal experience of the possession of living faith.” (158:6.4/1758.5)
Where do you get spiritual power?
“The cry of the righteous is the faith act of the child of God which opens the door of the Father’s storehouse of goodness, truth, and mercy, and these good gifts have long been in waiting for the son’s approach and personal appropriation.” (146:2.8/1639.3)
Thanks to you all who have been ministering to persons in need. Let’s support each other and strengthen ourselves for this work.
Photo credit: By DFID – UK Department for International Development – Rescue teams search earthquake-hit Chautara, Nepal, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39864462
Nicely said. What a different world we would live in today if each time we had a problem (World Trade Center, Syria, Covid-19) we responded with help for those trouble enough to enact the horror or afflicted by it.
The helpers apply the only ointment that can truly heal the wound,,,, love.
After the murder of George Floyd, I am minded of another illustration of your point, which you as a Canadian may have heard. A movie was being filmed in Toronto on a somewhat crowded downtown street. One character stole the purse of another character and ran away. But a bystander, not an actor, saw the event, heard the woman’s cry, ran down the “thief” and regained hold of the purse. Surprising, but the movie crew set up again, performed the scene a second time, and again a bystander intervened successfully. Twice more, the crew attempted to film the scene. After the fourth rescue in a row by an ordinary citizen on the street, they gave up on that scene.
Today, videos are powerful testimony. And even more powerful are those who risk intervening. There is training available for groups who wish to prepare themselves to respond to an active shooter; such training overcomes, to some extent, the paralysis of passivity that overcomes so many folks when such an event occurs. Going through the training and making some decisions in advance about what one is ready and committed to do in such a case would help. Nevertheless, as Pitirim Sorokin (the great Russian sociologist of love) observed, people who grow up in a city have more appreciation of culture; those who grow up in a rural environment have more intuition of how to respond to real life.