Blue sky, light cloud and sunshine this morning, a little warmer and no rain. A more cheering start to the day. I posted the YouTube link for Morning Prayer to WhatsApp, then got up, starting to feel light headed as usual after taking the meds.
After breakfast, an interesting programme on Radio Four from writer Matthew Syed in his 'Sideways' series, in which he explores ideas that shape our thinking from a different angle. It was about miracles. He spoke about his evangelical Christian upbringing and the offer of prayer for healing. In his experience of church life this was accompanied by miracles from time to time. He's now a non-believer. He responds to the question of whether miracles are ever compatible with scientific thinking by introducing neuroscientist Joshua Brown who was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour aged thirty, and able to examine with expert eyes evidence from his own brain scans. He made a journey to a series of churches to investigate if the ministry of healing prayer would make any difference to his condition, and if so how. In a way he was unable to explain with his medical expertise, the symptoms disappeared, the tumor stopped growing and then shrank. It was the cure he hoped for but couldn't account for. Prayer was the only thing that made a difference to him, first of all in his sense of well being and trust in the process under way, leaving him with a sense of wonder and gratitude.
Then Syed spoke about the Vatican's medical commission investigating claims of healing thanks to the intercession of saints, one of the evidence criteria in establishing a person's sanctity. The prayer of both living and dead persons is associated with cures without known scientific explanation - miracles in other words. As Pentecostalist theologian Professor Hollenweger used to say in lectures about the miraculous: "All healing comes from God. There is no healing that is not from God. The devil cannot heal, only shift symptoms."
A healing miracle of any kind is an occurrence that opens our eyes in awe and wonder to the mystery of life and the nature of reality. Whether or not we can describe what happens, or can analyse in detail how it happens, whether or not the timing of a miraculous occurrence is deliberate or random, its timing may be the only thing ultimately beyond explanation, the essence of a divine gift from the One above and beyond all, to whom all time and eternity belongs. When the miraculous confronts us with the mysterious nature of reality. In this way we are challenged to wonder why it happens and why we are its witnesses.
We were seven at the St Catherine's Eucharist. Ann gave me a lift home after coffee. The phone reminded me half an hour too early of a lunchtime acupuncture appointment. Not enough time to eat lunch, so I grabbed a calorific snack, walked to Parkwood clinic and arrived half an hour early. I had a good session with Peter Butcher, and noticed the light headed sensation dispersed after the treatment. I returned home and ate a meal Clare kept warm for me, then recorded and edited next Wednesday's Morning Prayer audio. I went out and walked up and down Llandaff Fields before shopping for food at the Coop, and returned just after sunset. I had enough energy today to walk a full ten kilometres. It's the first time I've walked that far in a month and only the second time this year. I wrote a reflection about Titus and Paul after supper. No wonder I feel tired tonight.
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