Metropolitan Community Church
Guerneville, California
Published in HIV Update, a publication of Kaiser Permanente , Winter of 2002/2003
Spirituality and HIV
“Let the beauty we love be what we do
There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground”
- Rumi
These words of the great Sufi mystic Rumi both inspire and challenge me in writing this article on spiritual resources for people living with HIV. In trying to define spirituality I hear the echoes of “there are a thousand ways ………” in my ears. The prospect of actually writing down a thousand resources makes me smile.
Yet Rumi speaks of a truth with which many of us resonate. His poems stir the soul’s yearning to connect, to transform, to deeply engage life, to engage love and to engage with someone or something greater than ourselves. Perhaps that yearning is the key to the need for spiritual resources or practices.
The Need for Spiritual Resources and Practices
A martial arts student was practicing staying centered during an attack. Thinking of this, he asked his sensei (teacher): “How long did it take you to not lose your balance?” The sensei answered: “I lose my balance all the time, I just come back to center so quickly that you can’t see it anymore”.
Life is messy sometimes, with many unexpected challenges that can throw us of balance. Spiritual practices do not take care of that. In living out our own life we bump into the life of others, and into our own rough spots. There are no spiritual resources to prevent us from doing so.
However, spiritual resources and practices help us to cope with difficult times. They help us to come back to center, to stay connected to our own life force. In this process we may find ourselves on a path where we connect more deeply with others and feel an increased sense of compassion. A sense of mystery and wonder may start to accompany us as we travel inward to find the spiritual resources already present within our own being.
Research and Spiritual practices
There is an increasing body of research that shows the benefits of spiritual practices. In a study of 1600 cancer patients with significant symptoms of fatigue and pain, those with higher levels of spiritual well being had a significant higher quality of life. “Spiritual well-being” resulted from regular involvement in spiritual practices. These daily practices were more important than what a person believed in.
In another study a group of HIV patients received an hour a day, six days a week intentional healing from people specialized in a variety of distant healing techniques from across the country. Distant healing can include prayer, meditation, movement, or energy work. The healing is done intentionally on behalf of a person who is sick, but who is not in the immediate presence of the person performing the practice. Compared to the control group who did not receive this treatment, they had six times fewer AIDS-defining illnesses, less than half the average AIDS severity scores, fewer outpatient doctor visits (185 versus 260) and significant fewer hospital days (10 versus 68). They also showed significantly lower psychological distress, depression, anger and confusion.
This is extraordinary! Science has actually measured the healing effects of intentional spiritual practices and prayer. Because of these results the National Institutes of Health is now funding an ongoing study on the effects of distance healing on patients with advanced HIV.
What the research points to, I believe, is that underneath the surface of our daily existence, there is a current, a life that moves through us and transcends the boundaries that we belief make us separate individual human beings.
What can we do to connect to the spirit of healing?
Any kind of illness or life transition has the potential to disrupt how we live our lives and how we think about life. However, if we focus only on the body in the face of an illness, we remain somewhere on the surface of existence. Wider questions rise to the surface, like: “Who am I in the middle of this situation?” “What is my life about, what do I want it to be about?” “Whom do I love, how do I love and who still loves me?” These are questions that are profoundly spiritual in nature. They have been asked throughout times and have been engaged by people all over the world in every religion.
It is these kinds of questions that need to be asked for us to find meaning, to experience wholeness, to experience a reverence for life flowing through us, connecting us to others and to Divine presence.
The search is not about finding the answers somewhere outside of our selves. It is about paying attention in a regular way to our own subtle inner lives – the parts of us that are not easily expressed to the rest of the world. Spirituality is about what our hearts open up to, what becomes part of our daily living. Mind, body, heart and spirit are all manifestations of the same life force, which is our birthright.
Awakening to that life force, grounding our selves in it and holding life more consciously affects all areas of our life. It is living from the inside out.
Ways to put spirituality into practice:
The essence of a spiritual practice is to show up with a certain regularity, paying attention to life as it is lived right now in this moment, being intentional about the quality and dimensions of your life and the lives of others. Here are some of the ways to incorporate spiritual practices into your life.
· Meditation. Spirit and breath are closely related. Meditation is still one of the foremost practices to come into our bodies, into the present moment. It is a centering practice aimed to help us keep our balance in a life full of changes.
· Prayer: give wings to an intention of healing and love for someone else.
· Service: volunteer and contribute to the lives of others.
· Attend Alcohols Anonymous and/or Narcotics Anonymous meetings.
· Write Poetry, individually or in a poetry group.
· Journal: this helps us to slow down and focus attention.
· Physical practices: Tai Chi, Yoga, some of the martial arts like Aikido, nature walks.
· Creative expressions: art, music, gardening
· Gratitude exercises:
· Make it a practice to write thank you notes
· Write down daily what you are grateful for
· Let one person know every day what you appreciate in them.
· Create an altar, pay respect to people in your community, those who are present and those who have passed on. Pay respect to ancestors.
· Light candles on behalf of somebody or something you are worried about.
· Play, improvise. Join an improvisation, dance, play group.
· Nourish spontaneity: Call someone to make sandcastles on the beach, rent roller-skates, remember what you find fun and incorporate that in your life again.
· Practice “silent blessings” for a day. Say “may you be blessed” or “peace be with you” silently to each person you encounter and notice how this changes the quality of your interactions.
May Sarton states in one of her poems “Now I become myself. It’s taken time, many years and places.” I invite you to name, claim and live your own inner truth, so that the doors open to your own authentic connection to spirituality.
“There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground”. I have not even come close to listing a thousand resources. I do believe however that over time people have used at least that many ways to honor life, honor their own spirit and bring more compassion into the world. See which resources and practices your heart connects to and follow those. Rumi’s words “let the beauty we love be what we do”, can guide us along the path of discovering our Spiritual resources and so unfold it into the beauty of who we truly are.
Rev. Elisabeth Middelberg M.Div, Chaplain: Kaiser Permanente San Francisco
Pastor: Metropolitan Community Church of the Redwood Empire