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By Harry Cummins
"So we do not lose heart; though our outer self is wasting away" - 2 Corinthians 4:16
"Behold, I am doing a new thing: now it springs forth. Do you not perceive it"? -Isaiah 43:19
My recent go-round with modern medicine has sent my mind spinning on the health of our world these days, not to mention my own well-being. What does it mean when a once-sturdy life or society suffers a measured collapse with advancing age? Is individual illness merely a reflection of the wider unraveling proliferating in our collective culture?
Bereft of answers to these grandiose questions, some considerations still remain.
Not every illness we confront, personal or societal, abates or reverses itself. Therefore, we need a new set of observations to challenge our thinking about healing and what constitutes true restoration. In this process we need each other's unique voices of experience. We need to hear them for their remarkable ability to balance self with reality, hope with acceptance, fear with affirmation. We need to hear them, especially, for their ability to establish a concomitant connection with one another.
To reconstitute ourselves, as individuals and as a society, in the midst of illness and attack, is to help one another make the attempt to go on...is to bear our histories and infirmities with the highest of human credentials.
Our old stories are ripe for retelling... but in transformative new ways. We need words with the capacity to turn memories into steadfast hope in the midst of repeated, cumulative loss.
Given the urgency of our age, I might suggest this should be an overriding agenda as antidote to our collective affliction.
