Spiritual Aspects of Illness

I'm currently reading a book entitled, "Cry Pain, Cry Hope" by Elizabeth O'Connor. the book was published in the late 1980's and is a wonderful read from the author's spiritual journal. Chapter 24 is entitled, "Learnings from an Illness". She quotes a book by Norman Cousins (Anatomy of an Illness) that speaks volumes about the non-physiologic aspects of disease - especially chronic illness. My post today is a sharing of this, as I believe it will resonate with many. Future posts will unpack it a bit more, but for today, here are Mr. Cousins' thoughts:

"There was first of all the feeling of helplessness - a serious disease in itself. There was the subconscious fear of never being able to function normally again - and it produced a wall of separation between us and the world of open movement, open sounds, open expectations. There was the reluctance to be thought a complainer. There was the desire not to add to the already great burden of apprehension felt by one's family; this added to the isolation. There was the conflict between the terror of loneliness and the desire to be left alone. There was the lack of self-esteem, the subconscious feeling perhaps that our illness was a manifestation of our inadequacy. There was the fear that decisions were being made behind our backs, that not everything was made known that we wanted to know, yet dreaded knowing.
There was the morbid fear of intrusive technology, fear of being metabolized by a data base, never to regain our faces again. There was resentment of strangers who came to us with needles and vials - some of which put supposedly magic substances in our veins, and others, which took more blood than we thought we could afford to lose. There was the distress of being wheeled through white corridors to laboratories for all sorts of strange encounters with compact machines and blinking lights and whirling discs.
And there was the utter void created by the longing - ineradicable, unremitting, pervasive - for warmth of human contact. A warm smile and an outstretched hand were valued even above the offerings of modern science, but the latter were far more accessible than the former."

I believe this is true for all persons who experience illness and gets to the powerful issues that are not physiologic - but are truly spiritual in nature. Modern medicine can not "cure" these issues; there is "no pill for this ill". We can, however, address them one person and one caring community to another.

Peace in your dis-ease,
Dan