Projected Healing

I met a deaf Anglican priest who works as a music director in a parish in the UK. He spoke to a group of us about healing. I asked him what healing means to him. He said, “acceptance.” He went on to say that a large part of acceptance is accommodation. People willing to make allowance for his situation and finding it in their hearts to still love him.

In the Fall we had a man visit our parish on a Sunday morning. He had been very involved in his parish, including singing in the choir. In recent years he began suffering the effects of macular degeneration. Macular degeneration is a medical condition, which results in a loss of vision in the center of the visual field. This means that, even though he still attends choir practice and stands with the choir on Sunday mornings, he can’t see well enough to sing his heart out. Even enlarged copies of the words were of little help.

On that Sunday morning at St. Paul’s in the Fall he cried and those near him, who knew his story also cried because for the first time in a long time he sang out with his former gusto. The reason was he could read all the word to the hymns on our screens. Even the third and four verses, the ones he hadn’t committed to memory.

Our slides are for him a real healing. At St. Paul’s he felt accepted and loved because we care enough to make it so he can sing and praise God along with the rest of us.

The Holy Spirit abounds.