UUPS Newsletter 2000

President's Column

A HEALING MINISTRY

Members and friends of the Psi Symposium were blessed this past summer to hear not one, but two presentations on healing ministry from the Rev. Thomas Mikelson, minister of the First Parish in Cambridge, Mass. The first address was given at the UUA General Assembly in Nashville last June, and the second at Psi Symposium Week at Ferry Beach in Saco, Maine last August. Thomas Mikelson’s address at the General Assembly will be printed in this year’s Psi Symposim Annual Journal later in the fall. One of the things that Thomas talked about was the use of healing prayer in his pastoral ministry. I would like to share with our members some healing prayers and meditations I have used in my ministry. I hope they may be useful to others. Please feel free to use them or adapt them in any manner. May the healing work of the ministry be manifest in all of our thoughts and prayers.

HEALING IN RELIGIOUS COMMUNITY
In the quiet of this place we gather to strengthen and reaffirm the ties that bind us to one another in love and hope and brotherly-sisterly affection. Each of us knows the pain of loneliness, the sting of loss or disappointment or failure. Each of us also possesses a great capacity love, to care, to reach out, to heal the broken the spirit to sing for joy, to rejoice in the great gift of life from the hand of God, or the deep mysterious well of being form whence we come.

There is strength and power and healing in religious community. Our burdens are lightened when shared and our joys are doubly gladdened. We remember those among us who need a healing word or thought or prayer. We send on wings of thought our hopeful healing aspirations for those whose lives are bound up with ours in hope and affection. May the Spirit of Love bridge the estrangement of souls and align itself with those healing powers resident within us and the universe. Thus do we weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice, and find ourselves strengthened therein.

The pain and anguish of the world press in upon us and move us to the quick because we care and find our meaning as part of the human family. But because we know that there is indeed strength and power and healing in religious community we are resolved never to let the brokenness of the world or the brokenness in our own lives to utterly break our spirits. We will go on in hope and love and courage, rejoicing in the power of the Spirit, because this too is our gift as children of God to give and to receive from one another. Thus do we gather to strengthen the ties that bind us together in love and hope and human-hearted holy affection.

A HEALING AFFIRMATION
We join our hearts and minds together in unity with the healing forces resident within human nature and the universe, and affirm for those in need (Give Names) restoration of health and harmony of being in body, mind and spirit.

O Thou who art the source and goal of all our striving and yearning for wholeness and holiness of being, lead us day by day nearer to thee and one another, and to the true meaning of our lives in love and service to others. Amen.

(Richard M. Fewkes – President, UU Psi Symposium)