Bird Droppings July 10, 2011
Healing is in all of us

“The first fact that distinguishes the human species from all others is that we are born too soon. We arrive incapable of taking care of ourselves for something like fifteen years.” Joseph Campbell, Pathways to bliss, 2004

It is so easy to get up knowing my children are safe and walk out into a morning unafraid, I have never been in the situation my parents were faced with my two younger brothers and me. Shortly after I was born they were unsure as young parents of the medical issues and why their new born was having seizures. I out grew that and moved on to polio at about three years of age and a few small minor other health issues in my childhood. My youngest brother also started with seizures and almost immediately the intensity increased and I think back to how my parents must have felt at that time especially as I sit holding and watching my grand daughter each day.
Watching my own children grow up with so few problems has been easy. A good friend has two small children one diagnosed with diabetes the other with health issues of their own. A few years past on a Monday a dear friend went in for brain surgery, not something that you volunteer to do, she knew that she may not walk away from it. But in this situation options were minimal, an aneurism on the main artery in her brain could rupture at any time and she would be gone. She had her surgery and survived and is doing fine.
There was calm this morning as I went outside with my dog. It was an uneasy calm, heavily overcast as if a storm is coming or maybe just a weather change, yet so peaceful and still. I was absorbed in the quiet, and the stillness, perhaps the storm will come. But perhaps the calm will stay and continue. I have a spot in the yard actually I call it a medicine circle where I often go to sit and to listen. As I sat birds were chattering about me along with a left over tree frog from last evening perhaps excited about the chances of rain and myself I was looking for answers and to what today would be for me.
I walked to my car after a few minutes and got my phone that I had left on the charger. At this time in the morning with little traffic in our neighborhood my front porch is a quiet resting spot as well. I sat down in the rocker and was listening. A buzzing or more humming sound caught my attention and I was face to face with a hummingbird. We started at each other for some time till the tiny bird flew off into the expanse of pines along side the road. A seeming coincidence but had I been a few minutes later or sooner no hummingbird, and those moments are for me is a part of my existence.

“Creative breakthroughs and prophetic knowing will become ordinary. Empathy and compassion will flower as a result of our deeper connection with one another. The awareness of immortality takes the pressure off living and dying. This will not happen automatically, however. We have to do our share and set our biases and prejudices aside. These are urgent matters.” Dr. Larry Dossey, Healing Words

It has been quite a few years since I first read Dr. Larry Dossey’s first book, myself coming from a seminarian background, my library is filled with books on prayer and the healing power of prayer. Everyday in the local paper articles and advertising for various churches allude to the power of prayer. There have been times in my own life when prayer was a significant issue. I recall my father telling the story of my brother lying in a bed at The Philadelphia Children’s hospital this was in the mid 1960’s and the head doctor Dr. C. Everett Koop (U.S. Surgeon General later 1981-1989) offering a prayer over John.
I recall a comment my father said years ago that Dr. Koop offered in all of his years in medicine and dealing with terminally ill children had he ever met anyone who refused prayer. Dr Larry Dossey in his work however is looking at prayer not only as a religious act but as healing intentions. Dossey even removes religious connotation from prayer as he looks at the power of prayer, in a California study where a group focused on the individuals and healing occurred.

“This is actually been tested in certain studies, and has achieved positive results. For example, at the University of California San Francisco Medical School, they actually tested healing intentions, which were initiated at a great distance by several individuals, for people with advanced AIDS. This was a double blind study. The people who received the healing intentions statistically did much better than people who did not. So this is not just fantasy. This is a valid phenomenon, which has been tested.” Dr. Larry Dossey

I am rambling a bit, a dear friend emailed back a few years back several incidents of healing and intuition recently, while she was a pastor in Delaware. A good friend would end his emails to me sending energy south. For a number of years now I have ended Bird Droppings with a simple line, please keep all in harms way on your mind and in your heart, each day. A very simple statement, as I sit and think imagine if we each would do this daily how profound an impact would that make on the world.

“We are made of prayers. With prayer we listen to what is important inside of us and all around us.” Navajo healer

“We are not alone. The spirits of those gone before guide our steps, our traditions, our beliefs. We are not alone. The care of those around us leads us to healing and wholeness and comfort. We are not alone.” Mohawk/Onondaga healer

“All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the children of the earth.” Chief Seattle

If we focus on those in harms way if we try and alleviate suffering and harm being done to others within our own realm of being, that will spread that will encompass soon all of mankind and the world will be touched. Today make it a point to keep all in harms way on your mind and in your heart and a special thought for a little girl in North Georgia and a local woman in Athens who just came out of surgery.
namaste
bird

Doc Bird’s Herb Garden note:
I found this in a little book on one of my trips to Barnes and Nobles. It is from the book, Listening with your heart by Dr. Wayne Peate M.D. an Iroquois healer as well as a medical doctor.

A soothing tea:

8 fresh peppermint leaves
4 fresh strawberry leaves
2 cups of water
Crush leaves, place in a tea pot. Add boiling water and cover for ten minutes. Strain and serve. I am making some right now although my strawberry leaves are minimal I did have a lot of peppermint.

It is wonderful although I use a few drops of agave nectar in mine.