(Medicine, from Latin mederi: to heal, remedy, comfort)
A dear friend thanked me today for the depth of a poem I shared with him. When you have a daily writing practice, like we both do, texts/poems inevitably vary in depth and beauty from day to day, so his kind feedback would’ve normally been very welcome. For some reason, however, I was stunned and couldn’t receive it as a compliment. Then I understood why.
Many weeks ago, I told a gifted practitioner and artist to whom I was giving a session that her latest painting, which she’d just shown me, felt to me like a medicine painting. I explained to her that that’s how I related to art and processes which seemed to have an uplifting, transformational power within them, affecting their creator/initiator, audience or both.
The poem my friend was referring to had been a medicine poem for me, in the sense that, as I wrote it, it transformed what had been a stuck, painful place within into potential, clarity and creativity. What struck me about my friend’s comment was that my ego would have usually received such words as a sweet compliment, giving me an encouraging (albeit very conditional) pat on the back. But this time it was stunned, because all it could remember was its helplessness at that moment, and the miraculous opening that seemed to have arisen from a place it had no access to. That poem was an unconditional gift my ego didn’t know how to relate to.
My mother was a medical doctor who, over time, also became an alternative medicine practitioner, versed in various healing arts. She had the gift of gentle, compassionate attunement, and pulled out of her “bag of tricks” what was needed in the moment: A prescription for a lab test, a remedy, a word or a touch of the hand(s). To so many of us, she seemed to always have the right medicine at the right time. My dear Enneagram teacher, Russ Hudson, once said (I know he’ll forgive me if I’m slightly paraphrasing): “Prayer is being open to what’s needed”. I believe my mother used to be prayerful in that kind of way while imparting her medicine.
As the ego is quick to forget and claim unconditional gifts as its own, I can see how my friend’s words were also timely medicine for me: they reminded me of the multi-layered gifts I received through a poem, a painting, my mom’s example, my teacher’s words, and many more moments and people. On this earthly journey of many joys and sorrows, may we always be granted the gift of being good medicine for ourselves and others.