I’ve enjoyed John Jere­mi­ah Edminster’s com­ments over the years, which is one rea­son I was hap­pen to get the sub­mis­sion that became The Cost of a Heal­ing Gift. It starts with the sto­ry of hav­ing a gift of min­istry rec­og­nized but what I like even more is that he talks about his jour­ney explor­ing and devel­op­ing it. What’s sur­pris­ing is that is he’s far from a purist:

we went to week­end train­ing work­shops; we read the writ­ings of Chris­t­ian heal­ers; shaman­ic heal­ers; and prac­ti­tion­ers of Rei­ki, tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese med­i­cine, Ayurve­da, and home­opa­thy. I longed to be able to inspect people’s ether­ic and astral bod­ies, their chakras and mar­mas, with a diagnostician’s eye. So long as it involved no stray­ing from Christ, I aspired to know how to mobi­lize heal­ing virtues in plant spir­its, min­er­als, col­ors, and sounds, and how to rec­og­nize “holy” places.

Some of this reminds me of the won­der­ful work of the eighteen-century Friend Samuel Bow­nas, whose book A Descrip­tion of the Qual­i­fi­ca­tions Nec­es­sary to a Gospel Min­is­ter is full of very use­ful advice on min­istry and warn­ings about pit­falls — roman­tic attach­ments, undue politicization.

The Cost of a Heal­ing Gift — Friends Journal 

The dis­cov­ery of a gift for heal­ing is only the first step in a process of learn­ing and…

Friends Journal