(From years ago)
I am old and long in harness.
For twenty-seven years, emergency medicine has been my life. I began practice when I was green and twenty-five; and now I’m gray and fifty. That’s old in this trade. But it’s time enough for some thoughts to gel.
I’ve been writing for about eight years. All of it, directly or indirectly, is my halting attempt to touch the elusive face of my Creator, the first wish of my heart. Perhaps that’s why the prose and timeliness of Ms. Allen’s article captured me so.
I say now what I presently believe to be true: nothing more; nothing less.
Dear Ms. Allen: In the article you sent me to review, I learn of other spirit-led practitioners. Seekers: Carolyn Geroux who gives small crosses and hope to the desperately and terminally sick. Inexpensive little crosses endowed with holiness by the spirit in which they’re offered. What else need I know of her… to know her? Anything more would be mere commentary on her godliness.
I read of Dr. Newsom whose inner journey began when he began to suffer irregular heartbeats. He was wise enough to follow those unlikely urgings to a study of the spiritual. His counsel is to be careful who we let exasperate us. In a language I cannot improve upon he warns us to be most cautious who we `turn away from our door.’ He says to ‘Come to them [your patients, or even, anyone you may meet] from a place of quiet.’ I read that, and I know he has traveled far in wisdom.
For it is within us, in a place beyond thought, where the Source attaches us to the eternal; where believing resides; and it is from that center that comforting must come. To be spiritual, then, must somehow include the ability to release and enter that uncharted vastness, and there find repose; a stillness we may not give away until we have attained it for ourselves.
I care little for the compounded abstractions of religion. Prayer. I’m not sure what to make of it. I haven’t yet settled why I need call for Someone who stands beside me. “Does God seem far away? Guess who moved…?” If I need summon my Creator, it takes no more than a whisper.
Early into medicine, I needed to be the hero – a self-conscious state of being. Now, in the patient working of time, I forego that central position and accept that I am but a player in a drama that reaches far beyond my understanding. Thus, it is left to me to serve as a bridge; to be the best instrument I can be. Now confronted by a half-heard plea for help, my inner voice may murmur, “I need You.” More than that is not necessary. He is nigh. And He knows the truth and fullness of the case before me far better than I.
Then the treatment of the patient – and the connectedness -begins. As best I can, I strive to move in concordance with the eternal spirit. Those who strive to be spirit-led will admit this is not a thing they can explain, for it lies beyond utterance and form, in a shadowy realm of intuition, of feeling.
Then what do I do? I watch the patient’s eyes, for they will tell you when to invoke the spirit. I lean down and take their hand in both of mine. Touching, an unspoken consolation; ancient in time; rich in message. If asked, “Am I going to be all right?” or any variation on that theme, I borrow from the Irish, so gifted in idiom. “I believe God holds you in the hollow of His hand,” for that, freed of detail and chaff, is what I believe.
– Lucky Garvin
Look for Lucky’s books locally and on-line: The Oath of Hippocrates; The Cotillian; A Journey Long Delayed.
