God, Please; Heal Her, Please.
Jeremy Baruch, MD, Department of Psychiatry; Associate Director of University of Michigan Medical School Program on Health, Spirituality and Religion, University of Michigan
Moses prayed for Miriam’s recovery after she was struck with leprosy. Miriam is, in fact, cured; but that is the prelude to what may be the most important part of this narrative. Miriam is then sent out of the Israelite's encampment for seven days. The people of Israel did not continue their journey until she returned.
This narrative challenges our contemporary concept of medicine. In this story, physicians are like Moses, the facilitators of healing. As we care for our patients with careful assessment, diagnosis and treatment, we are at risk of being under the illusion that we have succeeded when illness subsides. However, this narrative reminds us that treatment is a necessary, but insufficient, condition for healing.
Miriam, now cured, is alone. Leaving the camp, she leaves her community; where she is spatially and relationally oriented, grounded and secure. We seem to take life for granted. How often do we marvel at the fact that we exist at all? Illness has the capacity to make us wonder, if we are open to it. Being sick, loving someone who is sick, or caring for the sick reminds us that what we take for granted is not a given.
The narrative makes clear that Miriam needed to leave the camp because she needed time to think. And how could she not? Illness shakes our plausibility structures, challenging what we think we knows, and forcing us into new paradigms of self knowledge and relationships. The process of transitioning through illness from wholeness to shattering involves a new understanding of one's sense of self and relationships.
That said, the telos of this process is recreation. Miriam can only be whole again when she returns to her community, integrating her renewed, vulnerable sense self into her web of relationships. Miriam's previously competitive feelings toward her brother Moses, are never mentioned again following her recovery. Perhaps her newfound perspective allows her to feel more at peace in her familial relationships.
This story appears to end with Miriam's reintegration into the community and the Israelite's continue on their journey to the promised land. However, Miriam returns to the reader's consciousness a few chapters later when learn of her death.
Her death forces us to vulnerably zoom out again and shakes our sense of complacency. From the perspective of a lifetime, all cures are temporary measures to delay the inevitability of death. Miriam's experience of illness and recovery help us conceptualize cure as a part of healing. It broadens our concept of healing to include vulnerability, self examination, and renegotiation of relationships - with the awareness that all cures and all growth is ultimately finite.
This conceptualization is helpful when thinking about recovery from acute illness where there is a stable plausibility structure and sense of self that precedes a new diagnosis. In the current medical setting, most of the diseases we treat are chronic medical conditions. The rest of the paper will reflect on the meaning of Miriam’s story in our contemporary medical context.
This narrative challenges our contemporary concept of medicine. In this story, physicians are like Moses, the facilitators of healing. As we care for our patients with careful assessment, diagnosis and treatment, we are at risk of being under the illusion that we have succeeded when illness subsides. However, this narrative reminds us that treatment is a necessary, but insufficient, condition for healing.
Miriam, now cured, is alone. Leaving the camp, she leaves her community; where she is spatially and relationally oriented, grounded and secure. We seem to take life for granted. How often do we marvel at the fact that we exist at all? Illness has the capacity to make us wonder, if we are open to it. Being sick, loving someone who is sick, or caring for the sick reminds us that what we take for granted is not a given.
The narrative makes clear that Miriam needed to leave the camp because she needed time to think. And how could she not? Illness shakes our plausibility structures, challenging what we think we knows, and forcing us into new paradigms of self knowledge and relationships. The process of transitioning through illness from wholeness to shattering involves a new understanding of one's sense of self and relationships.
That said, the telos of this process is recreation. Miriam can only be whole again when she returns to her community, integrating her renewed, vulnerable sense self into her web of relationships. Miriam's previously competitive feelings toward her brother Moses, are never mentioned again following her recovery. Perhaps her newfound perspective allows her to feel more at peace in her familial relationships.
This story appears to end with Miriam's reintegration into the community and the Israelite's continue on their journey to the promised land. However, Miriam returns to the reader's consciousness a few chapters later when learn of her death.
Her death forces us to vulnerably zoom out again and shakes our sense of complacency. From the perspective of a lifetime, all cures are temporary measures to delay the inevitability of death. Miriam's experience of illness and recovery help us conceptualize cure as a part of healing. It broadens our concept of healing to include vulnerability, self examination, and renegotiation of relationships - with the awareness that all cures and all growth is ultimately finite.
This conceptualization is helpful when thinking about recovery from acute illness where there is a stable plausibility structure and sense of self that precedes a new diagnosis. In the current medical setting, most of the diseases we treat are chronic medical conditions. The rest of the paper will reflect on the meaning of Miriam’s story in our contemporary medical context.