Breathing Soul into the Body of Medical Poetry
Nathaniel J Brown, MD, PhD., Staff Physician and Assistant Professor, RMR-VAMC and Colorado University School of Medicine, Department of Anesthesiology
Orthodox liturgy and medical humanities share a surprising intersection: they both teach and reflect using poetry. Poetic expression is exceptionally well developed in Orthodox Christian worship, but nascent in modern medicine.
The Christian use of liturgical poetry is inherited from its Jewish forebears, who excelled in poetic praise of the God of Israel. The psalms overflow with it. Orthodox prayers lean heavily on the psalmic tradition which continued into the early church with some of the towering figures being poets whose works we continue to pass down in liturgical use to the modern day: Gregory of Nazienzus, Romanos the Melodist, Cassia, and John Damascene.
The poetry of Orthodox liturgy invites the worshiper to contemplate salvation history, the life of Christ, of prominent Christians, among other events. That the texts of a great many parts of the liturgy are poetry is not a coincidence.
Poetry as a form of human language is unique in that it gestures more than it deduces. It is thereby expansive, leaving room for the listener to be edified not just by the “plain textual meaning(s)” but also through contemplation of the negative spaces, what is hinted at or unsaid—sometimes because language cannot say it, sometimes because it would be cumbersome to say it precisely or exhaustively, etc.
Medical poetry is gaining momentum because it captivates, it invites. It gestures instead of explicating ponderously. Medical poetry is far from ascendant, but its increase in prominence is precisely for its imprecision, for its empty spaces. It gives back to medicine something scientism fought hard to remove: the unknown, the barely glimpsed, the ineffable.
It is in the quiet, empty spaces, that God so often speaks—Elijah and the whirlwind, Christ’s admonition to pray in secret. In Orthodoxy the “prayer of the heart” is called hesychasm, which means, roughly, “quiet” or “silence.” Quiet does not mean cloistered and purely contemplative—it means a focus on turning the heart toward God without ceasing, while going about all other aspects of life.
There is something especially necessary about the particular silences of Orthodox prayer. Hesychia is “the mystery of the age to come.” It is in the silence between lines, between words, that God speaks to our hearts. We can offer Him our momentary silences as invitation. In using poetry liturgically, Orthodoxy teaches its members about hesychastic prayer, about tending to negative space, about inviting God to the interior of our hearts.
Paraphrasing contemporary Orthodox poet Scott Cairns: poetry ought to be a scene of meaning making, not merely a transcript of meaning already made. Physicians can often diagnose, can sometimes cure, but healing (as in making whole) is more rare because we do not attend to the hesychia of poetic prayer: leaving room wherein the patient can incorporate their lived experience into the encounter, and God can to speak to both. It is a lesson physicians can begin to learn in medical poetry, but it’s something medical poets could learn a great deal about from Orthodox liturgies.
The Christian use of liturgical poetry is inherited from its Jewish forebears, who excelled in poetic praise of the God of Israel. The psalms overflow with it. Orthodox prayers lean heavily on the psalmic tradition which continued into the early church with some of the towering figures being poets whose works we continue to pass down in liturgical use to the modern day: Gregory of Nazienzus, Romanos the Melodist, Cassia, and John Damascene.
The poetry of Orthodox liturgy invites the worshiper to contemplate salvation history, the life of Christ, of prominent Christians, among other events. That the texts of a great many parts of the liturgy are poetry is not a coincidence.
Poetry as a form of human language is unique in that it gestures more than it deduces. It is thereby expansive, leaving room for the listener to be edified not just by the “plain textual meaning(s)” but also through contemplation of the negative spaces, what is hinted at or unsaid—sometimes because language cannot say it, sometimes because it would be cumbersome to say it precisely or exhaustively, etc.
Medical poetry is gaining momentum because it captivates, it invites. It gestures instead of explicating ponderously. Medical poetry is far from ascendant, but its increase in prominence is precisely for its imprecision, for its empty spaces. It gives back to medicine something scientism fought hard to remove: the unknown, the barely glimpsed, the ineffable.
It is in the quiet, empty spaces, that God so often speaks—Elijah and the whirlwind, Christ’s admonition to pray in secret. In Orthodoxy the “prayer of the heart” is called hesychasm, which means, roughly, “quiet” or “silence.” Quiet does not mean cloistered and purely contemplative—it means a focus on turning the heart toward God without ceasing, while going about all other aspects of life.
There is something especially necessary about the particular silences of Orthodox prayer. Hesychia is “the mystery of the age to come.” It is in the silence between lines, between words, that God speaks to our hearts. We can offer Him our momentary silences as invitation. In using poetry liturgically, Orthodoxy teaches its members about hesychastic prayer, about tending to negative space, about inviting God to the interior of our hearts.
Paraphrasing contemporary Orthodox poet Scott Cairns: poetry ought to be a scene of meaning making, not merely a transcript of meaning already made. Physicians can often diagnose, can sometimes cure, but healing (as in making whole) is more rare because we do not attend to the hesychia of poetic prayer: leaving room wherein the patient can incorporate their lived experience into the encounter, and God can to speak to both. It is a lesson physicians can begin to learn in medical poetry, but it’s something medical poets could learn a great deal about from Orthodox liturgies.